tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45263758440008637892018-03-06T20:04:09.407-05:00Games' Oppressive Kultur-terror Underworld(formerly Gamers&#39; Obstinacy &amp; Kosterian Understanding)Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-64474500565182253442013-04-28T02:06:00.003-04:002013-04-28T02:07:08.223-04:00FehI completely forgot to mention that I had another <a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2013/04/09/pax-gdc-igf-rip-a-meandering-fatigued-look-at-the-last-two-weeks/">MD thingy</a> almost 3 weeks ago.<br /><div><br /></div><div>It's got me complaining about everything is horrible. Who would've thought.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ha. Hahaha. Ha? Whatever, I'm working on something... else.</div><div><br />Since AAA video games are hibernating for another month or two.</div><div><br /></div><div>Calm before the storm.</div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-78352481387055031652013-02-23T17:51:00.002-05:002013-02-23T19:47:27.976-05:00How Time Flies<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2013/02/21/with-friends-like-these-screw-ups-and-patterns-of-power-in-the-games-industry/">Hey Medium Difficulty isn't dead! And they let me put out a hit-job on some easy targets like Ben Kuchera and Randy Pitchford and PA and Kotaku.</a>&nbsp;Maybe it's old hat, but sometimes you wanna just revisit the classics. But now, also, another thing.<br /><br />So: one year of this nonsense...<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br />I've been blocked and derided by enough writers and editors and designers and espoused enough unpopular thoughts in my short tenure in Games Journalism that I'm pretty sure I've established a permanent black spot on my reputation in record time. I'm impressed saying things like "you write like a Kotaku editor" or "<i>Dys4ia</i>&nbsp;left me somewhat wanting" or "maybe there are benefits in trying to clarify what a medium actually constitutes" or "namedropping philosophers and diary-level confessionals are bad looks for writing about <i>Tetris</i>" could get me more or less professionally blacklisted in 365 short days.<br /><br />I don't know what I was really expecting, though. I started with the premise of "these people are all terrible at what they're presumably being paid to do, I could write circles around them" and... that kinda bore itself out. Compared to last year, I haven't really gained or lost any respect for anyone that I didn't admire or laugh at. If anything, getting snubbed on a regular basis helped me remember that writing with other writers as your audience is how you get all those articles I couldn't stand! And then I wrote a few of those! I guess I had to become what I hate.<br /><br />I'm literally nobody, and I can go back to being nobody whenever I like. I got lucky that a struggling outlet was trawling for contributors when me and couple of other morons got an itch. And then I got to make an ass of myself in a field I never took seriously in the first place. Which was awesome! I think getting a solid year's mileage out of "fuck you, you're wrong" was pretty impressive. Or pathetic. Either way...<br /><br />This isn't some kind of longwinded farewell bullshit. Like I'm gonna give up laughing at ridiculous nonsense and dumb Internet drama with <i>Tomb Raider</i>, <i>Bioshock: Infinite</i>, and an entire new generation of consoles literally around the corner? Hell no! I'm gonna get to repeat myself all over again and just change the proper nouns around, because nothing's any different. A shitty excuse for a subculture defined by conspicuous consumerism and corporate fealty doesn't magically stop being ripe for lampooning because a bunch of new shiny boxes came out. Stopping preview coverage wouldn't change the core problems with anything even if that was actually going to happen.<br /><br />People who make and play and cover games have every right to be a bunch of cynical, crabby jerks. The press hasn't really responded to that at all, though, because that wouldn't keep the money flowing. I'm glad there are some people making half-assed overtures at some kind of civil rights homunculus out of Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, and when "social justice in gaming" gets to bell hooks I'm sure it'll be a hoot. All the hyper-academic writers flexing their degrees at each other can Lacan their Hegels until their Derridas rupture, and it'll keep being deliciously overwrought. And all the old press dogs who repeat company bylines like the middle guy in the Human Centipede will be around until they kick the bucket because they're the <i>real</i>&nbsp;backbone of Games Writing. Guys like me, though... we're the replaceable ones. Mostly because we don't have the money on our side, and we never will.<br /><br />But what do I know? You could probably write circles around me. Really, I'm fucking awful at this! I'm a total hack! I bought like five games last year, and half of those were downloadable titles! I'm a Fake Gamer Guy, and I bullshitted my way through an entire <i>year!</i>&nbsp;Just by being&nbsp;<i>crotchety&nbsp;and bored </i>and<i> stating the obvious!</i><br /><i><br /></i>Think about what <i>you&nbsp;</i>could do. Here's to Year 2.Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-91185361191584906052013-01-20T23:51:00.000-05:002013-01-20T23:54:24.399-05:0025 Signs You're A Gamer<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What does it mean to be a "gamer" in the 21st century? Our guest contributor Ryan "Bingo" Milliard, who you may remember from his <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/05/transmissions-from-another-world.html">review of the story-driven kart racer <i>Redline 4</i></a>&nbsp;back in May, has managed to find my contact information again after several mistaken phone numbers and addresses. Here below you will find his remarkable capacity in drawing out the deeply (<i>deeply</i>) hidden romanticism of the "true gamer".</span><br /><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(Look: I publish his work because he pays <i>me</i>&nbsp;per-word.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's a rough business out here... we all gotta get by somehow. Apologies in advance to Todd Terje...)</span></div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><div class="p1"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="p1"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></b></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><audio controls="controls"><br /><source src="http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/5/29/3309807/bingo.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"></source><br />Your browser does not support this audio<br /></span></audio><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span> <br /><div class="p1"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>25 SIGNS YOU'RE A GAMER</u></b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/25-signs-youre-a-writer/">A GameLocus/Thought Catalog collabo joint</a></i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>by Ryan "Bingo" Milliard (<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/GasparLewis">@GLRyanM</a>)</i></span></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. You take a 3DS with you everywhere, sometimes even into bed with you, just in case you have a&nbsp;<em style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">Pokémon</em>&nbsp;craving at three in the morning that absolutely must be satiated. That gym battle never usually ends up good, but like everything you play when you’re stoned, it had great gamefeel at the time.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. You really, really want to buy a Famicom</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;even though you never expect to actually use it. You just want a Famicom because you’re one of the 10 people in the world who still finds them romantic and sexy. All of those people are gamers.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. When you date someone and they say that they majored in “Programming” or “Game Design” you’re instantly excited but then exceedingly nervous. Why? Because you’ll eventually be expected to read some of their code — something they really love and don’t show to a lot of people — and have an opinion on this much guarded demo. You can’t deal with this kind of pressure. This has gone badly before.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. You buy a lot of games you never, ever end up playing — just out of the thought that you might find time to play it someday. I took my copy of American McGee’s <i>Alice</i> with me on a trip to Paris once — just in case I suddenly felt the urge to play a challenging 38-level opus by my favorite producer. When that disc later got stolen out of my bag, I actually cried. It was like losing something I never knew I had. (Side note: I even have a copy of <i>Bad Day L.A.</i> with French subtitles turned on, and my French isn’t even very good. Someday.)</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5. You will use almost anything as a design document or scratch paper in a jam — like receipts, money, bank slips, old envelopes, newspapers, unopened mail or death threats from your bank. You can’t throw out anything in your apartment without checking to see if it has a sick game concept on it first. That bag of popcorn could be important.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">6. When you hear the words “I’m on deadline,” you immediately burst into action, a Pavlovian response to a) always having something due and b) always being behind on it. You’re certain that if they were able to make your procrastination into an energy source, it will solve our nation’s fuel crisis. Or at least make gas cheaper.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7. Most people get tattoos of trees or pigeons or misspelled odes to their exes. You get tattoos of your favorite lines from <i>Final Fantasy</i> or Shigeru Miyamoto’s face. Full disclosure: I currently have two game-quote tattoos and I’m planning to get some lines from Hideo Kojima, when I can figure out the placement. One day, I’m going to be the Guy Pearce in <i>Memento </i>of living Asian dude verses.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8. You have more games than you have friends, by a large margin. You’re a little concerned that one day, you might become a hoarder. (Fact: I own two copies of Jonathan Romero’s <i>Daikatana</i>. One is a backup, just in case I happen to lose the other one. Insurance, my friend.)</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">9. There are Amazon deliveries at your door almost every day. You’re certain that at this point, they have to know you by name.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">10. You sometimes refer to developers by their first name or a pet name you never realized you gave them, like calling Miyamoto “Shig” or “Shiggy,” Will Wright “Willy” or Kelton Flinn “Kelly.” Most people aren’t allowed to call him Kelly, but it’s an in-joke between the two of you. And, yes, it still counts if he doesn’t know about it and you’ve technically never met him.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">11. You have really weird dreams about gaming or your favorite designers — like that you suddenly have a great idea for a game but then your computer eats you or that you’re best friends with David Jaffe — which, truth be told, is a little boring. Agoraphobes aren’t great partiers. You also dreamt that you were the manager of a Miller brothers boy band. Rand was the sexy one that did all the press junkets, while Robyn was the shy one who had all the musical talent, the one everyone forgets about.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">12. You’re a little too in love with Smash Bros., so much so that you’ve thought about giving all your children characters' names. (Marth Mewtwo McCloud, I apologize in advance.) Also, you find it really sexy when someone knows what wavedashing and edgehugging are.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">13. Big libraries are one of your turn-ons. There’s nothing more erotic than someone with a twelve-inch stack of discs. As long as they know how to use it.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">14. You’re a little too obsessed with double XP and kill/death ratios and have a favorite controller. An alarming amount of your budget goes out every month to gaming supplies, strategy guides and Dew — but mostly Dew. Fact: If I gave up drinking Dew, I’d probably be a millionaire. Is it sad that I choose my love of soda over my love of money? No. Not expecting any fiscal reward proves you’re a gamer.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">15. When you were in school, lots of your other friends were majoring in things that you could make actual careers out of — like Online Gambling, Extortion, Funneling Money to the Caymans and whatever else they’re learning at business school these days. You majored in something that your friends universally raised an eyebrow at or didn’t know you could major in, like Interactive 3-D Environments, 3D Modeling and Animation, Information Technology and Digital Games or Artificial Intelligence. You now have a very fancy, expensive piece of paper that means you learned a lot of crap you forgot later.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">16. Your dream job is to one day have a career that affords you to be in your pajamas all day or do all of your work from bed — like Gabe Newell or John Carmack. Some people want a career where they have to look professional all day. You want to look like crap, eat Cheetos, watch <i>Big Bang Theory </i>and pour your heart out into your computer. But who doesn’t want that, really?</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">17. No one will ever play you in Monopoly, Risk, Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride, because you always win and you’re always super competitive about it — especially when you’re drunk. You’re like the New England Patriots of board games.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">18. You sometimes refer to your self-imposed gaming schedule as “going to play” or “playtime” and are often known to say “I have to grind from 9 to 5 tomorrow.” People usually ask where you play and you say, “From home. I’m a gamer.” Of course, they always then want to know what you really do for a living and you say, “I’m a gamer. I game for a living.” Then silence happens.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">19. Whenever someone breaks up with you or one of your friends does something really cartoonishly terrible, your immediate consolation is that this is going to make for a great custom character. Recently someone decided to stop seeing me for no apparent reason, and my response was, “Great! Hope you like getting the People's Elbow from The Rock in WWE '13.”</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">20. When you go on dates with people, they always ask if you’re going to tell you guildmates about this, and you assure them, “No, silly! Of course I’d never talk about you.” You are a dirty liar. You will absolutely talk about them. You’ve already started that gloating session in your head.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">21. People sometimes know things about you before you actually told them, like choice anecdotes or oddly personal information that you wouldn’t share on a second date. Then they tell you that they “read your blog” or “follow you on Tumblr.” And you realize that you share that kind of personal information on the internet all the time. Next time, you’re just going to tell your date you’re a serial killer.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">22. You have a bad habit of solving your problems or conflicts by sending the person a Steam gift, rather than just confronting them about it. In high school, my mother was in her “I want to be an Undead priest phase,” and I could tell when she and her husband were in a fight because there would be a DKP sheet on the table every morning until whatever they were going through was resolved. Some people fight, you start a raid group rift of angry feelings.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">23. You never stop playing something after you’re done with it, which makes returning to Blockbuster difficult. Eventually you just put a gun to your head and say, “Screw it, I’m done with this.” (Which is how Obama must feel every day.) You’ll later come up with the perfect run-through for that game — a month after it was due.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">24. You have certain Japanese honorifics you can’t stop obsessively using (anyone who has read my work knows that girl loves being called "-chan" and "-kun") and others you want obliterated from the face of the earth. I’m neutral on "-sama", which can be used sparingly, but I cannot stand the sight of people using "-san". I feel like they’re stabbing me in the eye.</span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">25. You often put off major things until you’re done with this level or this dungeon — like showering, eating or (occasionally) breathing. One day you might turn blue in the face and die mid-raid, but it’s understandable. You need those purples.</span></div></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-17684055620962636382013-01-16T18:01:00.000-05:002013-01-16T18:05:48.071-05:00Vision Quest<br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'm not a big fan of Kill Screen. I think I've made that pretty clear here. They've done several pieces which I enjoyed quite a deal, but they mostly came early in their run, and often from non-regular contributors or interviews carried on the strength of their subjects. As a bit of a confession, my big 2012 In Review joke was, in great majority,&nbsp;pull-quotes&nbsp;from Kill Screen; I'm talking well over half with a couple of repeat appearances. And to think I once bought a T-shirt off them as a starry-eyed dreamer.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I'm bored and spinning my wheels, so why not fling a little more mud in their eyes? Everyone loves a scrappy underdog, right? Better than adding another voice to the din surrounding that torso fiasco, anyway. Thankfully I had the Kill Screen&nbsp;<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/pages/vision-statement/">vision statement</a>&nbsp;re-tweeted into my timeline today, so I got a good chuckle from the short form. But I felt that wasn't just being snide, but unfairly cheap. So why not really take a fine toothed comb to where their mission falls apart at the seams? I can even give it a score on a 10-point decimal scale like their estranged mother, Pitchfork! So, have I wrongly misaligned our critical community's <i><a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/">Kid A</a></i>&nbsp;or been overly charitable to our <i><a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5607-travistan/">Travistan</a></i>? Let's find out... together.</span><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>1. Play does not mean a waste of time.&nbsp;</b>One of the most unpleasant by-products of our Puritan ancestry is the negative association between fun and work. We are told: if you are having fun, you are not working. Fun is simple-minded; work is struggle; time is money. Time spent in play must be a waste, right?&nbsp;We think play is a fundamental human endeavor. Play motivates us and speaks to our most natural human inclinations. Play greases the wheels of social interaction. A life immersed in play is a life well-spent.</span></i></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Yes and no.</b> Play exists as a frame separate from reality; this is its gift and its curse. All play is inherently tied to some internal fiction and an agreement by between the creator/operator of the game, the arbiter(s) of its rules, and the players engaging in it. Generally they have existed as pastimes and tests of skill removed from the dire consequences of reality. Chess models the strategies of the battlefield, athletics replace bloodsport. To play, or to watch a singularly capable player excel, is entertainment at its purest. That said, a life <i>immersed</i>&nbsp;in play goes against moderation, and a shirking of the world beyond its borders. Reality will never wholly fit within the space of games, because the purpose of play is to explore our capabilities in an environment with as little lasting consequence as possible. Noble in spirit, but overreaching by a wide margin. <b>Half credit.</b></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="font-style: italic;">2. Videogames are maturing as a medium.&nbsp;</b><i>Out of the sprites of </i>Spacewar!<i>, games have burgeoned into a diverse and sometimes magical field. Games at their best reflect all of the wonder, beauty, and intelligence found in music, film, theatre, literature, and the rest of the arts. We believe that our conversation should not dwell on whether games deserve their place in the pantheon of the arts, but *which* games deserve it.</i></span></blockquote><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Not really. </b>Technologically and functionally, sure, the advent of computing has brought about games far more intricate and complex and cerebral than the classics of the past. Data is more easily stored, actions can be more easily simulated and graded, leaving more room in player's minds for the nuances of actually acting within the system. However, the games both large and small that are often the greatest critical success tend to eschew the player's input for the telling of a more rigidly defined story. Rather than allow the player's actions to form the crux of the story, other mediums are subsumed and subjugated to yield the desired ends. Games can certainly <i>reflect</i>&nbsp;music and film and literature when they utilize or even plunder from them wholesale.&nbsp;The "games as art" question was never a matter of whether making a game involves creative effort, but rather a whinging plea for cultural capital for a form rarely afforded any. And, quite frankly, the&nbsp;reliable&nbsp;floods of disgust that issue from PR campaigns and major trade shows prove that, if anything, video games provided with a greater palette of sights and sounds to draw upon have very often chosen juvenile thrill-seeking and reinforcement of existing audiences. <b>+3</b></span></div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>3. Everyone games, but not everyone is a "gamer".&nbsp;</b>We are moving out of a world where people ask "Do you play games?," and moving into one where we ask "What games do you play?" Everyone plays. The term "gamer," however, connotes one highly specific culture. There is nothing wrong with the popular expression "gamer", nor with that culture, but we are more interested in the question of what type? as opposed to whether at all.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Wrong.&nbsp;</b>The concept of the "gamer" is inherently depraved; it goes beyond the sense of being an aficionado of a given medium, like "bookworm" or "movie buff" accords, and this is because of the parasitic "culture" which exists around it. As a label, it is the subsuming of one's life to a backwards and degenerate world of backwards social politics, crass consumerism, corporate fealty, and petulant demand for recognition. To be a "gamer" is to demand recognition solely for one's pastimes, and is the crux of the misplaced and venomous hate spewed at outsiders. For there to be a "gamer" there must be "non-gamers" who must be scorned as "casuals" for lack of commitment or "fake" nerds for trying to somehow exploit the true believers, themselves defined by a "No True Scotsman"-like fallacy. The "gamer" is a manifestation of every pathology that plagues us, and there should be no sympathy for anyone who would willingly take up that mantle. <b>No points.</b></span></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>4. Games need an advocate. &nbsp;</b>No medium matures on its own. Rock n' roll had Rolling Stone, the Internet had Wired, fashion had Vogue. We believe that Kill Screen can be this advocate for the true, the beautiful, and the good in games.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Nice try. </b>Rolling Stone's musical coverage is barely worth the magazine stock, the Internet more or less engulfed Wired, and fashion (like both other subjects) are already inundated with coverage. Attempting to understand our relation with what we consume is one thing, but trying to claim command over the arcs of creativity of thousands if not millions of people is the ultimate in pretension. There are enough places that have attempted to advocate "the true, the beautiful, and the good" and we can clearly see how successful they've all been. At that was before you devolved into a glorified newswire aggregator. Your arc from "pulse of the vanguard" to "digital glad rag" was hyper-accelerated by your own choice of subject and the fact that even the "fringe" you sought to cover was already well-exposed. <b>+0</b></span></span></div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>5. Games are connected to every other creative field...&nbsp;</b>It is a common misconception that games are something apart from the rest of creative production. Nothing could be further from the truth. Game-making is a fundamentally creative act and those that pursue it face the same dilemmas as painters, musicians, dancers, and poets. To make games is simply to make.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Good!</b>&nbsp;If anything, it's arguable that attempting to account for all possible methods of interaction from a player or user involves greater attention to detail than other mediums whose final product is consumed passively. Clearly there have been mistakes in worshipping at the Cult of the Auteur, but those are acceptable growing pains. I don't know if you'll be there for when that next step is made, but either way:&nbsp;<b>full marks!</b></span></span></div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>6. But games have a lot to learn from other creative fields.&nbsp;</b>The moat around games is partly of game makers own design. Game creators have not received the necessary exposure for the public to respect games as art. At times, gamemakers have hidden themselves from the public. At their worst, games can be insular, narrow-minded, and pandering. We want Kill Screen to help bring culture to games and games to culture.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Sort of OK. </b>In your zeal to rush games into the pantheon of Big Boy Art, you've chanted your hosannahs at the feet of offal from <i>Spec Ops</i> and <i>Mass Effect</i> down to <i>Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf</i>&nbsp;and <i><a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/essays/great-punk-experiment/">Horse in the Paint</a></i>. There's certainly a lot of credit due to designers and artists and musicians often bundled namelessly behind company names, it's true. But that's generally not the subject matter you've covered, now, is it? Big talk, little on results... but I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt that your hearts are at least in the right place. <b>5/10</b><br /></span></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>7. All games are social.&nbsp;</b>In the history of games, only a handful have been single player. Yet games possess the reputation as private and anti-social. We believe that all games are social. They are either played with others or played against the designer herself. We believe that all games should be played, and more importantly, discussed, with one another.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Not so OK.</b>&nbsp;Again, it's a nice line to trot out, but then if play is in some way "against" the designer when no other players are present, where does that leave highly experiential and didactic experiences like <i>Dear Esther</i>&nbsp;or <i>Analog: A Hate Story</i>&nbsp;that you so readily leaped to canonize? Sure, dialog is important, but all I've ever seen from Kill Screen is the forwarding of an agenda. Your comments section, like most on "high-brow" gaming publications, seems like an afterthought. You know perfectly well the choir you're preaching to. Your points here are again for ambition, with none for execution.<b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;">½</span>.</b></span></span></div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>8. Games are serious business.&nbsp;</b>Games generate billions of dollars of revenue for global economies, yet they are barely covered by the financial press. Games make a lot of money but do not yet command much attention.</span></i></blockquote><br /><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Hahahaha. </b>Yeah, okay. All the other consumer review sites and industry publications and imprints on popular culture and previews and reviews and analyses and blogs and vlogs and podcasts and forum posts that came before your glorious, fully-formed Aphroditic birth don't count. Drop the savior complex, it's so not flattering. Especially when you've proven so miserable at it. &nbsp;<b>Zilch.</b></span></div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>9. Games (and gamers) are more diverse than you think.&nbsp;</b>The range of creative products over the past decade demonstrates a real shift in the demographics of gamers and the interests of game makers. We believe that everyone has the perfect game waiting for them.</span></i></blockquote><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></span><div><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1"><b>More promises.</b>&nbsp;Games have been plenty diverse before the last decade. You, like so many others, insist on selling the past short to better glorify the present when the present isn't much different. These aren't new forms, this isn't unexplored territory; it's rediscovery at best and regression at worst. Your best bet would be to not try and ply your naivete into a narrative, but that's more or less your stock and trade. Because you don't have the knowledge necessary to form a complete picture, you get your writers to sacrifice themselves at the altar and try to cram their lives into the gaps. You can't put forward anything that approaches a thesis, so you cut corners and take shelter in unmitigated subjectivity. It doesn't pay its dividends. That shift you see is real, and its time as certainly come, but already you can't keep up with it. <b>Pity point.</b></span></span></span></div><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>10. Games are at a crossroads right now.&nbsp;</b>The Comics Code Authority led to book-burnings set back sequential art a half century in the United States. The Hays Code regulated the film industry's output and prevented the "ridicule of the clergy" and depiction of drug use. Rock n' roll was banned from dance halls around this country just fifty years ago. Games are young, just emerging from similar growing pains into their maturity as a medium. We want to document this growth. We want to be the vanguard that pushes games away from its misunderstood past and towards its bright future.</span></i></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What? </b>The past of video games has, for most part, gotten all the ignominy it deserves outside of some sporadic political fear-mongering. As time has progressed, the transgressions of "gamer culture" have only grown ever more exclusionary and depraved, or at the least those offenses have been better documented. Games are certainly young, but probably not in the way you mean to imply. The games (and occasionally the writers) you've chosen to highlight generally have the overwrought, insipid emoting and puerile libido of adolescence cross-bred with the entitlement and of a teething toddler. There are plenty of elder statesmen who know their craft and ply it with precision and skill, but you'd rather thumb through your friends' scrawled-in chapbooks and mewl collectively about how nobody understands you. The past shouldn't be vilified or forgotten, it should be built upon and improved; that's how mediums actually grow. If you push away from the past, how are you supposed to learn anything from its mistakes? The bright future is right around the corner, but you're not the ones who are going to usher us there. You're the awkward, gangly growth spurt we have to suffer through until it comes. <b>Three out of ten.</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Summary.</b>&nbsp;Your ties to Pitchfork gave away the whole plot. You wanted to be the Pitchfork of video games, with all that encompassed. You wanted the adoration of being a safe haven for the "neglected" and "misunderstood" games, while secretly being the kingmaker that would come in however many years to silently dominate the discourse. You wanted to cross-breed games into something marketably hip and safe, and you wanted it so bad you interviewed a musician who&nbsp;<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/interviews/ital-presses-buttons/">hasn't played any games in about a decade</a>&nbsp;under the pretense of finding common ground. You wanted all this, willfully ignorant that they were already a well-trafficked commodity in a demographic you rightfully disdained.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You marched in expecting a clean coup&nbsp;<em style="background-color: white; font-style: normal; line-height: 16px;">d'état</em>&nbsp;and got frozen out like Napoleon in the Russian winter. &nbsp;You underestimated how deep these waters ran, and how murky and polluted they were, and so you drowned.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You did not carve a niche for yourself; you were absorbed into another vestigial appendage of the beast you thought you could slay.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You came at games from every angle in your sizable arsenal, and all your successes were one-and-done flukes.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You tried to make something "traditionally" respectable out of video games, without paying due respect to the form itself or preparing against the people who you aimed to convert, and you failed as spectacularly as all who came before you.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: bold;">Final Grade: (5 + 3 + 0 + 0 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 1 + 3) / 10.0 = 3.2</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Congratulations, Kill Screen, you are <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13020-intimacy-remixed/">the remix album to Bloc Party's <i>Intimacy</i></a>, and I hope that is the size of the footnote history will one day afford your existence.</span><br /><br />Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-1035352862437527322013-01-08T23:27:00.000-05:002013-01-09T00:16:13.137-05:00The Broken Contract<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Not even a year into my illustrious career and already we're digging things up from the vault. Less for the best-selling hardcover collections, but I think I'll manage.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>But first, a foreword. I got into a number of decent discussions over the piece from people who bothered to read it instead of jumping onto the dog pile, which thankfully prevented this thing from being a <i>complete </i>wash. While I stand by the critiques of <i>Dys4ia</i>&nbsp;and <i>Lim</i>&nbsp;I make here, I wholly realize these games are important works by sheer virtue of their existence; I even had the privilege of watching their well-deserved lionization in real-time with the announcement of the IGF finalists.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>But I'm not interested in all-or-nothing criticism and analysis; merit can be found in failures, and flaws can be found with success. I felt that these games were important steps into the future, but not the attainment of that future. Anna Anthropy disagrees with me; if she thought something was wrong, she would have made her game a different way. We come from wholly opposite viewpoints on the nature of games and what their strengths as a medium are, and that's where dialog happens. All writers inherently forward an agenda, and I felt like blanket approval didn't serve mine. Busting chops and being all edgy isn't my thing, and most people who make it a habit are hacks, but there still needs to be room for measured praise.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Okay that was all boring but this is my blog damn it I DID IT FOR ME. Okay here it is.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b></b></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GK4ZJsso2Fk/UOZBIYnqoLI/AAAAAAAAALQ/nGIGer7ZGAQ/s1600/stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img alt="Hopefully this gets used on that traffic ticket I got on Christmas Eve." border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GK4ZJsso2Fk/UOZBIYnqoLI/AAAAAAAAALQ/nGIGer7ZGAQ/s320/stamp.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">When someone creates a work with the intent for it to be consumed by an audience, there are expectations that come with it. They're not immutable, but patterns emerge. They generally derive from the nature of the work, the medium used to convey it, the venue of its presentation, and the creator's intent in choosing these aspects. How much license is given to the audience is a crucial part of this.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Movies and television are generally passive experiences, while books and music leave room for imagination and use of the mind's eye. Mediums like improvisational theatre and interactive fiction begin to anticipate the participation of their audience, and while their arcs may hew towards specific results, there is room for divergence; experiences can become any of various iterations, and when living people are involved, instances can be truly unique.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The level of trust that the creator or creators of a work place in their audience can generally be measured in terms of how prescriptive the story is, and ultimately whose story is being told. Having various outcomes does not mean ceding authorial control, but the means of achieving them, the pathways to reach them, and the degree of divergence between them do.<br /><br /></div><div class="p2"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2bxOIdFtJhQ/UOZWq1btB6I/AAAAAAAAALw/S09QUSJ2uDc/s1600/youreacat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Well, it explains why I write so infrequently." border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2bxOIdFtJhQ/UOZWq1btB6I/AAAAAAAAALw/S09QUSJ2uDc/s320/youreacat.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">In all mediums, there is no outright invalid approach, only varying degrees of success which can only ever truly be known by the creators and intuited by critics or analysts. The audience will take away whatever message they've formulated from their own experiences regardless, and trying to dictate what they will conclude is the primary purpose of a work. The tools of creation are a system of coding a message, and their efficacy is measured in how well or how poorly that message is transmitted and decoded into ideas and emotions. Whether or not you want to deem it "art" or "high art" is irrelevant to the core principle: communication.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">So then, how do games communicate? Traditionally, they create a system of rules that govern interaction, and the experiences a player goes through and the techniques they use in pursuit of their goal are meant as the tools of conveying that message. The act of "play", structured or unstructured, with a game or a toy, alone or with others, is the creation of a testing bed for whatever the game asks of its player.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The notion of the "play frame" that distinctly dissociates a game from reality dates back to Gregory Bateson in the 1950s, and explains the power of play in deducing things about ourselves and our capacities. A game's power comes from seeing what a player is capable of, and the story that results from their actions is the key. Games are inherently designed to be trivial in relation to the greater whole of life; something being "just a game" is often used as a battle cry to defend objectionable and/or socially regressive content, but beyond that nefarious smokescreen is something more: the true source of the form's power.<br /><br /></div><div class="p2"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HPjN4Bs39xM/UOZXphprCHI/AAAAAAAAAL8/dho6RigLv58/s1600/jaialai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="I want to get to know these guys way more than Wish Fulfillment Sex Addict Space Jesus." border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HPjN4Bs39xM/UOZXphprCHI/AAAAAAAAAL8/dho6RigLv58/s320/jaialai.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="p1">Here's where the trouble starts.&nbsp;At a certain point, experimental deconstruction becomes nothing more than destruction, and the agreement between a player and the game breaks down. It's the reason the catchphrase "ludo-narrative dissonance" cyclically falls in and out of vogue. It's a reflection of the various shortcomings in recent games large and small. It's why finding profundity in games often amounts to sociopathy, and why adding superficial interactivity is a farce that does more harm than good to a story. What might seem like a bold challenge to preconceived notions at a cursory glance is often just another round of empty and misguided posturing, making fools of those who fall for it.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">I have a great and abiding respect for&nbsp;<i>Dys4ia</i>'s Anna Anthropy and&nbsp;<i>Lim</i>'s Merritt Kopas, and their stories deserve to be heard by as many people as possible. That said, their respective games attempting to directly tackle the issue of gender dysmorphia seem to do a disservice. Their visual representation is simplistic, as are the means of completing them. No amount of emotional heft can override that I "beat" both experiences in 5 to 10 minutes, and the most evident takeaway I got from both was a mild and brief sense of inconvenience.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">As much as I understand that I can never truly know their struggles, I feel that their games provided a vastly inferior window into their individual worlds than even a cursory familiarity with their biographies provides. Important messages are not aided by oversimplification, and to claim interactivity will cover any deficit in meaning is to utterly discount things as human as sympathy and empathy. I'm grateful that their bodies of work, in both written prose and other games, exist to provide the clarity both women so richly deserve, but I still see those specific instances as mis-steps. For something that seems like it wants an audiovisual experience with tight authorial control, choosing a medium open to audience&nbsp;influence&nbsp;or subterfuge like video games just seems like one of the worst possible choices compared to more rigidly passive mediums.<br /><br /></div><div class="p2"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aLcZH5KW7xg/UOZcNS1-KjI/AAAAAAAAAMY/evz3dN4Ix1E/s1600/dys4ia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Yes, that is a direct refutation of a quote from Anthropy's book. No, that's not going to win me any allies." border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aLcZH5KW7xg/UOZcNS1-KjI/AAAAAAAAAMY/evz3dN4Ix1E/s320/dys4ia.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="p1">Being admonished for so much as participating in a game is another dead end that seems to rear its head constantly. The ham-fisted hand-wringing of&nbsp;<i>Spec Ops: The Line</i>, the mocking of a player's obedience in&nbsp;<i>Bioshock</i>, and the "Nazi surprise" in the board game&nbsp;<i>Train</i>&nbsp;are nothing new, let alone revelatory. Each begins on the faulty assumption of its extremely rigid construction and ruleset being an accurate reflection of real people in complex circumstances, then plays its big twist and draws its conclusions from there. It provides a finite selection of undesirable choices within its "safe space", then calls us monsters as if those were the only choices we could or would make in real life. I've been duped into doing evil in&nbsp;<i>Crackdown</i>&nbsp;and been admonished for "my" senseless violence in&nbsp;<i>No More Heroes</i>, and at least those had the intellectual honesty to be ridiculous and shallow upfront.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">Faulty choice, be it binary or convergent or illusory, is not as egregious an offense, but it's much more widespread and still problematic. Bioware have practically made it a plank of their design platform, and in doing so have built a brand on rudimentary power fantasies. Their games are as riddled with unhealthy projection and sociopathic moral reductionism as many of the military first person shooters they're supposedly an antidote to. Some games manage to compensate with sheer pathos, like&nbsp;<i>The Walking Dead</i>&nbsp;adventure games, but even those who praised it all the way onto year-end best-of lists have occasionally voiced problems with its structure and mechanics.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">The fault isn't really with the designers themselves, who are reaching for (and failing to achieve) meaningful choice, but the unrealistic expectations of digital games to be able to satisfy those demands in the first place when it's currently beyond their scope. Computers have finite processing power with which to model some rickety semblance of a reality, and there are often sacrifices made to create a space in which the player's actions have relevance.&nbsp; Quantic Dream's experiments with sacrificing depth of input for breadth of story in&nbsp;<i>Indigo Prophecy</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>Heavy Rain</i>&nbsp;were fascinating, but ultimately came up short. Most people came pretty comfortably to that conclusion, but for some reason, games that invert that same problem by giving control but stripping player agency have yet to be roast on the same spit. Simply put, being satisfied with the mere feeling of being in control of a game's proceedings is to only evaluate a single facet of the work and be smug in one's own ignorance, and positing the theft of player agency as some grand statement on nihilist philosophy is nothing short of intellectual charlatanism.<br /><br /></div><div class="p2"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X_PbrvMXXaE/UOZdHjXXwjI/AAAAAAAAAMo/s8AdtnpeqDM/s1600/indigo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Oh yes indeed, I got the Unsatisfying Quick Time Event Blues." border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X_PbrvMXXaE/UOZdHjXXwjI/AAAAAAAAAMo/s8AdtnpeqDM/s320/indigo.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="p1">There is a third way, however. Look at the games that create individual moments, then let the player draw their own significance and make a compelling story from there. The shared experiences of players in games like&nbsp;<i>XCOM: Enemy Unknown</i>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<i>Minecraft&nbsp;</i>or&nbsp;a particular open-ended&nbsp;<i>Dungeons &amp; Dragons</i>&nbsp;module all carry the spark of humanity in them. Games with large communities focused on multiplayer have their own entire histories, which the best players can become a part of. As socially problematic as the sexism and racism of stereotypical FPS and fighting game players might be, that is just a byproduct of their demographic composition; their communities' core revolves around play and the interactions fostered through the promise of testing and comparing skill. The inclusion of half-baked multiplayer modes in story-heavy games are almost a vestigial reflex in acknowledgment of a truth we seem to be losing: drama requires a human element, and most high-profile games only succeed in stamping it out.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">Consider&nbsp;<i>Johan Sebastian Joust</i>&nbsp;in the following thought experiment. Build the functionality into a devoted hardware "jousting wand" and sell the rights to Milton Bradley to put it in the toy aisle on a shelf below Bop It. &nbsp;Sure, it's not the talk of the video game community anymore, and no way on Earth is it a Kickstarter darling driving the&nbsp;<i>Sportsfriends&nbsp;</i>pack to success, but playing it isn't any less fun. That's because it would be the same game, and just as worthy of praise for its design, just as playing "prison chess" where you get shivved for winning doesn't change the rules of chess or make it a different game. The audience can't escape context when it's time for them to engage something, but the work itself is always free.&nbsp;</div><div class="p1"><i><br /></i></div><div class="p1"><i>Joustin' Johan</i>&nbsp;would be as big an afterthought punchline to most games writers and indie designers as&nbsp;<i>Mr. Bucket</i>. It would have no cultural capital to help validate the cesspool of a subculture they've anchored themselves to, at least compared to the games playing dress-up in the closets of the "grown-up" mediums. Games become nothing more than a safe label to avoid the scrutiny and competition of artists and designers in more established forms, even if it means co-opting pre-existing communities like interactive fiction just to prop up the sagging tent. The&nbsp;computerized&nbsp;mimicry of what real people are capable of will inevitably wilt in the light of scrutiny for as long as we insist on working against the strengths of games as a medium.<br /><br /></div><div class="p1"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-na5HoGIwtUU/UOZg6tyU73I/AAAAAAAAANA/VDSqsO1TnlI/s1600/childrobot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Congrats on reaching the 'uncanny valley' of eliciting emotional responses!" border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-na5HoGIwtUU/UOZg6tyU73I/AAAAAAAAANA/VDSqsO1TnlI/s320/childrobot.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="p1">This isn't a blanket condemnation, or a proclamation these problems are impossible to solve. It's simply a call to realize that these games are not the panacea that so many others would have you believe. For my misgivings about games like&nbsp;<i>Lim</i>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<i>Dys4ia</i>, they are almost certainly are a better hint of the way forward than hopeless piles of self-hating reductionism like Yager Development's long-gestated stillbirth. At the very least they're a shelter of social responsibility when we constantly struggle to so much as keep up with modern mores. The trap to avoid is the assumption we've reached the end of the road.<br /><br /><br /></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-90405048687893482012013-01-08T01:15:00.000-05:002013-01-08T02:32:45.271-05:00The Man Who Wasn't There<br />So apparently Medium Difficulty got an overhaul and now the article's gone missing for the last couple of days. Maybe because it was published the day before the rollout? Curious is all; just figured it was worth mentioning since I'm not banking on it going back up. I doubt anyone particularly wants to read it, but I have a backup drifting around somewhere, so ask me if you want to read it and worst comes to worst it gets a home here. (This is how I'll let it quietly vanish, shirking responsibility for it since nobody reads this blog.)<br /><br />Maybe it was nice gesture to that guy who considers saying "no, you're wrong" and calling my article a "fart party" counts as a bon mot. Eloquence I'm sure both Anthropy and Kopas couldn't provide on their own, let alone outdo, since you felt the need to speak on their behalf. Oh well, nobody's perfect.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/JNQ0GkGN3yM?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><br />Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-32571664378198798942013-01-05T20:05:00.001-05:002013-01-08T01:19:50.962-05:00Hot Water Again<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2013/01/05/the-broken-contract/">Polarizing!</a><br /><br />At least I got a chance to tweet at Anna Anthropy about it real quick. She thinks my criticism is dumb and misinformed. That's what happens when you come from opposing points of view on the nature of games as a medium, I guess. And I've heard from enough people I could stand to loosen up, and not just on the vocabulary, so I can at least call this a teachable moment. Noticing nobody's complaining about another chance to kick Spec Ops while it's down, though!<br /><br />Vive le difference.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ChX4C56kITc?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><br />Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-19047440759678425902012-12-28T20:28:00.000-05:002013-01-08T01:19:34.621-05:00The Year In The Rearview: A Gallery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A commemoration to the New Games Journalism of 2012.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A juxtaposition of select quotes with visual complements.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">All images are best seen at their full size. (750 x 500 px.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Additional submissions welcome!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sP870MfApio/UN5A6cf4-SI/AAAAAAAAAKA/jZLpMNCN6gs/s1600/theyearinreview-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sP870MfApio/UN5A6cf4-SI/AAAAAAAAAKA/jZLpMNCN6gs/s400/theyearinreview-3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GY79bP4teys/UN5A6PEc8lI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/0Rm22fl59c4/s1600/theyearinreview-20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GY79bP4teys/UN5A6PEc8lI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/0Rm22fl59c4/s400/theyearinreview-20.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lc_PQ69-xTw/UN5BojX8HbI/AAAAAAAAALA/TX7Epesff4M/s1600/theyearinreview-20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lc_PQ69-xTw/UN5BojX8HbI/AAAAAAAAALA/TX7Epesff4M/s400/theyearinreview-20.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9P4ROK0jljU/UN5A3LH3uGI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/NDXr2iYlDP0/s1600/theyearinreview-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9P4ROK0jljU/UN5A3LH3uGI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/NDXr2iYlDP0/s400/theyearinreview-16.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rp-djfx3GUY/UN5A8EXCd1I/AAAAAAAAAKg/BXHDqekQoMg/s1600/theyearinreview-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rp-djfx3GUY/UN5A8EXCd1I/AAAAAAAAAKg/BXHDqekQoMg/s400/theyearinreview-7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H_rguySZVQc/UN5A38eYtOI/AAAAAAAAAJY/h32xe_O7Ptg/s1600/theyearinreview-17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H_rguySZVQc/UN5A38eYtOI/AAAAAAAAAJY/h32xe_O7Ptg/s400/theyearinreview-17.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JEs6Cq1mhgQ/UN5A8ntsgGI/AAAAAAAAAKo/e--R3ET_u9M/s1600/theyearinreview-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JEs6Cq1mhgQ/UN5A8ntsgGI/AAAAAAAAAKo/e--R3ET_u9M/s400/theyearinreview-8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UXsedVUA3rk/UN5A5kYprII/AAAAAAAAAJw/hFgHerRvKqI/s1600/theyearinreview-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UXsedVUA3rk/UN5A5kYprII/AAAAAAAAAJw/hFgHerRvKqI/s400/theyearinreview-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K-AwW6y4a9Q/UN5A2sj5NEI/AAAAAAAAAJI/bOIWyxmn8tM/s1600/theyearinreview-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K-AwW6y4a9Q/UN5A2sj5NEI/AAAAAAAAAJI/bOIWyxmn8tM/s400/theyearinreview-15.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3-luXUCq02E/UN5Azi0rd5I/AAAAAAAAAIY/CsfJ30ZsKgk/s1600/theyearinreview-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3-luXUCq02E/UN5Azi0rd5I/AAAAAAAAAIY/CsfJ30ZsKgk/s400/theyearinreview-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P19L3yt6NC0/UN5A4x-NgDI/AAAAAAAAAJo/CDMbQile6o4/s1600/theyearinreview-19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P19L3yt6NC0/UN5A4x-NgDI/AAAAAAAAAJo/CDMbQile6o4/s400/theyearinreview-19.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qZOc5BycvQ0/UN5A71RptBI/AAAAAAAAAKY/kP32paNzWdk/s1600/theyearinreview-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qZOc5BycvQ0/UN5A71RptBI/AAAAAAAAAKY/kP32paNzWdk/s400/theyearinreview-6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aUiyWgO7I1c/UN5A1RpnNZI/AAAAAAAAAI4/FqGdArxkWxo/s1600/theyearinreview-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aUiyWgO7I1c/UN5A1RpnNZI/AAAAAAAAAI4/FqGdArxkWxo/s400/theyearinreview-13.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rt3-LNx9PCA/UN5A0S-06PI/AAAAAAAAAIo/jTBViw6yXMQ/s1600/theyearinreview-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rt3-LNx9PCA/UN5A0S-06PI/AAAAAAAAAIo/jTBViw6yXMQ/s400/theyearinreview-11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ub5yIbJzCHg/UN5Az1tm8JI/AAAAAAAAAIg/8exbwWWE9T0/s1600/theyearinreview-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ub5yIbJzCHg/UN5Az1tm8JI/AAAAAAAAAIg/8exbwWWE9T0/s400/theyearinreview-10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--aoikG97R4c/UN5A7Gg_MYI/AAAAAAAAAKI/9ArYJT1qHgk/s1600/theyearinreview-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--aoikG97R4c/UN5A7Gg_MYI/AAAAAAAAAKI/9ArYJT1qHgk/s400/theyearinreview-4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JkZ9TFz9D6Q/UN5A9HZ-fBI/AAAAAAAAAKw/AgBKmXeKRZY/s1600/theyearinreview-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JkZ9TFz9D6Q/UN5A9HZ-fBI/AAAAAAAAAKw/AgBKmXeKRZY/s400/theyearinreview-9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9P9mVgrVds4/UN5A2GOzZeI/AAAAAAAAAJA/qEC58cQiP9A/s1600/theyearinreview-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9P9mVgrVds4/UN5A2GOzZeI/AAAAAAAAAJA/qEC58cQiP9A/s400/theyearinreview-14.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uy9EDZyoepM/UN5A09gcZfI/AAAAAAAAAIw/ZaMtXfF6GJ0/s1600/theyearinreview-12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uy9EDZyoepM/UN5A09gcZfI/AAAAAAAAAIw/ZaMtXfF6GJ0/s400/theyearinreview-12.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vul324Q7g1g/UN5A7SzY1qI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/vgynwC5-Cwc/s1600/theyearinreview-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vul324Q7g1g/UN5A7SzY1qI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/vgynwC5-Cwc/s400/theyearinreview-5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aDmDoimmopA/UN5A9YtL4oI/AAAAAAAAAK4/htFhOrtXeFw/s1600/theyearinreview-last.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aDmDoimmopA/UN5A9YtL4oI/AAAAAAAAAK4/htFhOrtXeFw/s400/theyearinreview-last.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Is it 2013 yet?</div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-10464565251822709552012-12-11T22:02:00.000-05:002012-12-12T13:40:02.824-05:00Everyone Loves You, Nobody Cares<h3 style="text-align: justify;"><b>DISCLAIMER: If you're already sick to death of games writers writing about gamers writers and games writing and getting all hyper-personal about it, go ahead skip this whole mess. I don't blame you, I generally can't stand it either. But to critique it, I have to go hypocritical and actually use it. Feel free to just ignore this whole mess and comment that you did so. I won't be offended in the least.</b></h3><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></h3><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><b>I'll probably manage one more Real Game Thoughts thing before year's end but this sure as heck isn't it. No edits, no running it by a friend; it's raw and kind of disjointed, but whatever. I had feelings and this happened, so, you know, sorry in advance. Happy Hanukkah, free Palestine.</b></h3><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">------------------------------------------------</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is no worse possible lens to experience life through than a video game. To attempt to faithfully render humanity through a finite, fixed and pre-ordained system is to utterly destroy any semblance of it. No matter what people within a small, self-congratulatory circle of thinkers on the Internet might crusade for, the truth is that they are ultimately insignificant ephemera. Even the most sedate and routine life has more spark, more verve, and vastly more value than any streamlined and over-workshopped program could ever render. Which is why there is nothing more frustrating than watching writers fall again and again into the trap of using video games as a framing device for their own lives. So now it's my turn for Story Time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When I was 12-13, my mother's breast cancer metastasized for the third time and I spent that winter watching her deteriorate, sunken eyes and bald head,&nbsp;slowly losing her mind on a morphine drip.&nbsp;Most of my vivid memories from that time are listening to her hallucinate spiders in the fluorescent ceiling lights through her drugged stupor and burying my face in algebra homework in empty break rooms in an attempt to pretend my world wasn't collapsing around me. I watched my family come within an inch of permanently fracturing as friends and acquaintances by the dozens either fled from or were driven away by the chaos. When she was transferred to a convalescent home for palliative care, I refused to see her for months and admit to myself that this time, unlike when I was six or when I was three, all hope was lost. I saw her there once, breathing slowly in medicated sleep; I touched her hand, told her I loved her, said goodbye and went home. I was the one who picked up the phone the next morning to hear she had died.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've written about my experiences for catharsis before on a few occasions, but that was more for me than any audience and I've shared it very sparingly. Some of that has been part because of how I choose to present myself and how rarely these kinds of things come up, but mostly because whatever I reveal and how I do so becomes part of what I leave as my memories of her. I know that there is as little mercy for online strangers as there is in the real world, and so I am generally very sparse with what I choose to share about my life. Even those in my circle of Internet Friends who I've confided in are few and far between, but they can tell you what I've said here is true. Know that my choice to share this small fraction of my inner self with you should signal that I'm not fucking around.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Now, you tell me: at any point in that passage, did you wonder what video game I got that Christmas?</i></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">------------------------------------------------</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">I get that most people who write this much about video games do so because they feel a deep need to justify their own significance by prattling on endlessly about how mature and deep and artistic and life-affirming and gosh-darn meaningful games are now. More so than ever before, in fact, because their forebears were a bunch of hacks making kids' stuff, where that could never still be the case because there are epic cutscenes and binary moral decision trees and Hollywood voice actors and fleeting name-checks of social forces and lots of guns/gore/boobs. This desperate clamor for vindication leads to the subsuming of the medium's strengths in service of hackneyed linear narratives that clumsily grope at humanistic themes and pat themselves on the back for cribbing presentation notes from Cinematography 101. It's why we are now plagued with senseless preening over faux-retro gallery installations, hosannahs for the Cult of Indie Game Auteur&nbsp;and 50,000-word exegeses&nbsp;on&nbsp;ham-fisted&nbsp;military shooters that take their emotional cues from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg9edhb4OBs">Crackdown</a>. It's all different acts in the same farce.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Highly experiential works of creative non-fiction that try to shoehorn video games in double down even further on this problem by forcing me to watch capable, skilled writers repeatedly try and fail to imbue a bunch of trivial, banal software with life and purpose at the expense of their own. Reading personal memoirs of tragedy and woe and overcoming hardship, which should be powerful all on their own, ring needlessly hollow when forced to pivot around some nugget of computer code that ever more and more discounts the user from having any meaningful input. It's torturous to me to watch people subsume even a moment of their lives, let alone their most defining peaks and valleys, into discrete chunks of data they had no hand in crafting. As far as I'm concerned, claiming games now have the kind of emotional palette to delve into the human spirit when they struggle with something as fundamental as the value of a singular, finite life is borderline sociopathic.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have other issues with these joyless compromises between baring one's soul and staying within an editorial byline. Some of it is a question of motive and ego, and starts to get into deeply personal territory that's unfit to share. It's why I didn't submit this for review to a publication; it didn't seem like the proper place. It's an ugly neologism, but "netiquette" is a very real and vital consideration whose finer points seem to be utterly lost on people. Granted, I've failed a few of times on the basics, but overall I'd like to think I manage.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Truth is, I only started writing as a lark, almost on a dare with a couple of other chuckleheads who were similarly fed up with this incessant empty posturing that constitutes the bulk of popular games analysis. I kept at it longer than them, not because I was any better, but because my time is more worthless and I have a steady stream of nonsense to rail against regularly enough to warrant publication.&nbsp;I can't pretend I haven't become at least partway invested, since I've gotten emotional over it to a fault and said things I still regret for more than just the consequences I've suffered.&nbsp;I carry on because I realize the value of having even one more halfway-competent voice to help try and shout against the din, despite the fact I get no value added from nattering my own head off.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">I wouldn't want writers I criticize or deeply disagree with to stop, even if my opinions had any bearing on their lives. When I bother to get all riled up and complain, it's because I see something that has the makings of the real way forward but going horribly wrong at a crucial point. I don't argue or analyze the work of people who I consider to be of no value; I laugh at them and go on my merry way. I don't waste my breath on repackaged press kits and entrenched fanboy drivel. It's this new guard of writers that drive me up the wall, having all the potential to be there if and when a sea change comes in their chosen subject, but quickly falling into the same patterns they claim to be railing against.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite all evidence to the contrary, I try to live with an open and sympathetic heart, which is what makes trying to connect to someone through their writing so hard when there are these needless obstructions in the way. No life is of any greater or lesser inherent value than any other, but it's this kind of writing that seems to invariably assume the contrary. Losing a loved parent young doesn't grant me any kind of authority or emotional high ground beyond knowing a pain that nearly everyone will have to suffer, twice, and having a brief head-start on being able to get some distance after&nbsp;intimately&nbsp;knowing that sorrow. I chose to reveal this not out of seeking pity, or trying to elevate some coincidental artifact of my life to a place of significance at the cost of my own life's intrinsic meaning, but to illustrate that no person is without a story to tell.<br /><br />I gave you this tiny window into my existence beyond video games (i.e. most of my existence) as proof that there are other modes of coping, more solemn and more silent, and that such stories will only ever fly in the face of the innumerable others never to be told. Writing these kinds of pieces for mass consumption means you attempt to measure yourself against the unknowable unspoken worlds of your colleagues, your audience, and other people you will never even know the existence of. If you have a story, and it's almost certain you do, just tell it and that should be enough. Don't try to contort it to fit some cockamamie content filter, because it's diluting a part of your soul, and the only thing more sickening than doing that in exchange for nothing is doing it for money.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">------------------------------------------------</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you really want to know, fine, here's your big reveal. It was a used copy of SSX Tricky for GameCube. After constantly renting it over and over again from Blockbuster, it just made sense to just own the copy they were trying to get rid of. Even as I insisted it was OK not to get it, my father got it for me spur-of-the-moment because he knew I liked it, and it would help distract me for however long I would play it. It was just a gift from a distraught father to a distraught son, a simple token of love that could have taken any physical form and meant just as much. It never went under a Christmas tree or into wrapping paper; neither of us was really in the mood for it.&nbsp;We were too preoccupied with our real lives.</div></div></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-33181190071691161592012-11-22T13:14:00.000-05:002012-11-22T13:14:10.296-05:00You Don't Want To Miss A Thing<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/11/22/toys-in-the-attic-a-thoroughly-modern-reading-of-revolution-x/">Boop!</a><br /><br />Similar to the last time I did something <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/05/transmissions-from-another-world.html">this dumb</a>, but no Incredible Bongo Band. The constraints of scrutiny. Probably helps that the game I'm framing with exists this time. Although I guess I basically described what the world would be like if people were heavily engrossed in the F-Zero universe and not Mass Effect.<br /><br />Happy Thanksgiving, eat the rich!Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-62109121525217500852012-10-20T01:03:00.003-04:002012-11-22T13:15:03.929-05:00Rise From Your GraveYes! <a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/10/19/requiem-for-linnaeus-on-the-taxonomy-of-game/">A new thing!</a><br /><br />Yeah it borrows thematically from that old "Fun and Games" series (<a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/fun-games-pt-1.html">1</a>) (<a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/fun-games-pt-2.html">2</a>) (<a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/fun-games-pt-3.html">3</a>) (<a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/fun-games-pt-4.html">4</a>) &nbsp;and also&nbsp;"<a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-games-shouldnt-want-to-be-art.html">Why Games Shouldn't Want To Be Art</a>" a bit, but it's all fresh and new and there's a funny picture with a baby in it.<br /><br />No the baby is not particularly funny and it's not doing anything. Sorry.<br /><br />Okay. Well. Uh... see ya.Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-20234021055956663872012-09-30T20:03:00.001-04:002012-11-22T13:14:38.234-05:00My First Public Apology™If you're reading this, chances are you know what this is about, and greater still you're one of the people I owe an actual apology. Not a tweet, not with any kind of qualifications or explanations or deflections through humor and irony. I did that already, and it was done in self-preservation and cowardice. This is nothing less than a total admission of fault.<br /><br />The things I said were rude and spiteful, were motivated by nothing and came from nowhere. The words and names I used were secondary to the emotion behind them, which sought only to hurt and was childish in the extreme. I lost contact with several writers for whom I have a great deal of respect and whose writing I enjoy on a regular basis. Whatever&nbsp;infinitesimally&nbsp;small grievances I may have with their work from time to time were far outstripped by my senseless vitriol in a moment of weakness and idiocy.<br /><br /><b>I am truly and earnestly sorry for my actions, and any ill effects I caused to those I slandered. I am owed no forgiveness, and can only ask for it humbly and ashamed of what I have done.</b><br /><b><br /></b>Thank you.Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-13302654640804520602012-08-18T00:32:00.001-04:002012-08-18T00:32:11.878-04:00I Just Want Bang Bang BangYada yada blah blah&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/08/17/hired-guns/">Medium Difficulty</a>&nbsp;bleep bloop etc.<br /><br />Remember those late 90's ads for the Marines where the cadet would scale a cliff face freehand then fight a malevolent Norse ghost with jujitsu before being swallowed by light and outfitted in full uniform? Yeah: military FPS games are the recruitment equivalent of that, except way less interesting.<br /><br />Also Trent Reznor sucks and so did the ARG he made several albums ago. Why they all gotta be promoting something; make another ARG that exists for its own damn sake. I liked that; that was fun. <br /><br />ARG ARG ARG.Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-87698917468742538082012-07-25T19:27:00.002-04:002012-07-25T19:28:24.365-04:00Hawk a Loogie<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/07/24/lost-in-space-and-time-perception-memory-and-tony-hawk/">The drill: you know it.</a>&nbsp;Just some Tony Hawk HD jazz.<br /><br />At least it's not the worst thing I've read on the subject<a href="http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/tonys-busy/">.</a>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-49499068824391472212012-07-06T08:12:00.000-04:002012-07-10T18:33:29.798-04:00The Hat Trick<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/07/05/fear-of-music/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yep; another one over at Medium Difficulty.</span></a><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You might recognize a good portion of it as a more artfully condensed version of a five-part series <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-flesh.html">from</a> <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/02/another-brick-in-wall-pt-1.html">a</a> <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/02/another-brick-in-wall-pt-2.html">few</a> <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/another-brick-in-wall-pt-3.html">months</a> <a href="http://gamergoku.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-flesh.html">ago</a>, but I figure that with a new <i>Rock Band</i>&nbsp;title just on the horizon and the future beyond that uncertain, now's a good time for it.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white;">Give it a spin! It's definitely a more brisk read.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also this terrible thing happened, so it's not like the problems I cover have gone away or in any way improved.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://0.gvt0.com/vi/hm73_XRttNQ/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hm73_XRttNQ&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hm73_XRttNQ&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></span></div><a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/discord"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">P.S. Kill me.</span></a>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-90286680060023517332012-06-20T18:17:00.001-04:002012-06-20T18:17:49.124-04:00Again?!Yeah and also it was almost two weeks ago. My bad; that heady E3 week took a lot of Hate Juice out of me.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/06/08/heart-of-darkness-e3-violence-and-context-for-outrage/">That would be here.</a><br /><br />I'm probably going into hibernation until the next hilariously terrible thing happens while working on rewrites of old things that maybe this time won't take a week's worth of article-text.Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-91626645729399332702012-05-31T19:52:00.002-04:002012-05-31T19:52:55.195-04:00Whoa! What! Wow!There's a new article and it's not here! Because it's being run by the cool, fresh and cute people over at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/">Medium Difficulty</a>!&nbsp;What the heck, right? Yeah, I know!<br /><br />Anyway the article is directly linked below,&nbsp;and also the terrible secret of my birth name is exposed.<br /><br />[<a href="http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/05/31/pandoras-lunchbox-deregulating-decency-with-dorks-dollars/#comments">L@@K</a>] (Warning: suggestive images of moe anime schoolgirls and fetish models and Krahulik tweets.)Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-77189387501382947022012-05-28T12:37:00.001-04:002012-11-22T13:07:58.402-05:00Transmissions From Another World<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Have you ever wondered what entries in the modern slate of AAA titles might look like if a different genre of game had been triumphant instead of first-person action-shooter-RPGs? No? Well, now you probably are.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Read along to the accompanying audio for enhanced effect. Multimedia!</span><br /><audio controls="controls"><br /><source src="http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/5/29/3309807/redlinefinal.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"></source><br />Your browser does not support this audio<br /></audio><br /><br /><div style="width: 230px;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> <br /><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b><u>TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT... ONE MORE TIME</u></b>&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>review by Ryan "Bingo" Milliard (<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/GasparLewis">@GLRyanM</a>)</i></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">[WARNING: Heavy spoilers to ensue.]</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">As I pressed Start and created my save profile for the conclusion to this highly lauded tetralogy, I could only anticipate what kind of staggering finale was in store and the closure it would bring. It had been less than a year since I last donned The Captain's regalia, but that only served to keep my memories crisp. As the intro cinematic played and that familiar orchestral refrain surged to the fore, I immediately felt at home. Still, for all my expectations, the rewards that lay in store for me could never truly be predicted.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">---</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The save-reading wasn't as blissfully perfect as I had envisioned, but the sense of continuity was more than well-preserved. My allegiances remained intact; while years had passed since The Captain's tragic accident, familiar faces rightfully brightened or glowered in response to my bittersweet homecoming. Hushed whispers of those in my crew who had passed away wafted quietly through the garages and watering holes which too had seen their share of changes. For instance, since my Captain had chosen the more violent response to the infamous "urinal confrontation" scene of the last game, the bathroom of the Boost Pad bar had been remodeled… save for the same blood-spattered ceramic tiles in the texture. Brilliant.</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"></span> <br /><a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">For all its narrative prowess, the game still packs in ample room for customization to both your Captain's visage and their vehicle. Engine class, paint job, ground clearance, torque, boost capacity, and turning radius all play subtle but faintly telltale roles in your kart's handling during the basic interstitial races. For the most part, action stays tight and engaging thanks to ingeniously scripted "rubber-banding"… but no matter the difficulty setting, the faceless hordes are never too threatening. You are possibly the greatest driver ever to reverse-fire a projectile at an oncoming opponent. They know when to keep a wide berth.</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Handling operates more or less the same since <i>Redline 3</i>; tweaks have been made to the handbrake and drift boost timing, but the core mechanics remain true to past installments. AI teammates handle more or less the same; there's the occasional instance of friendly fire or watching them drive the whole course in reverse, but nothing a quick reset or nudge generally can't fix. By and large, whoever you choose to recruit for your final season on the asphalt, they share your motivation to win the Universe Cup and save the planet from the dreaded Maldolent, while still earning enough Coin Bits to pay for Zippy's life-saving transfusion.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The "wow" factor in the set piece races, however, is firmly cranked to 11, as expected. Choosing to assassinate either Slegte or Txarra while they both stalled precariously overlooking a lava pit was viscerally satisfying, especially the in-engine cutscene of his or her demise before returning control to the player. There's the illegal graveyard street race on a figure-eight circuit that crosses over itself at Sensei's angel-crested tombstone; the thought of the track shape resembling the symbol for infinity is not lost on me.&nbsp;Driving the 25 laps on the empty moonlit oval track where The Captain began his career as he recited his internal monologue of anguish and redemption left me in awe. It's a master course in character development, showcasing both his dedication to racing and an almost monastic plea for absolution.&nbsp; And to those who choose to leave the starting line in the team race where your last living daughter is being held hostage: you have stronger stomachs than I.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Even with all these amazing experiences, I don't have it in me to reveal the final "race" (if you could reduce it to something that simple), but know that the mastery of tying together all the loose ends is matched by how difficult the choice you have to make is. Maybe more so than any of the past games' crucial forks combined. Even the inevitable explosion on Lap 49 of the Galaxy Grand Prix that closed the second game pales in comparison.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Versus Mode fares well, even if greatly de-emphasized since the original <i>Redline</i>. The online-only DRM is trivial here; cramming the action into tiny divisions of the screen just for the sake of local multiplayer is a holdover from past games of the genre that has finally been retired. Coin Bits, chevrons, and kills earned online pay forward into the storyline in a bold way; there are endings you can't get without at least 10 solid hours logged on Battle Arenas. (Which, by the way, are as cunning and devilishly fun as ever.) There's a reason the e-sports leagues have stayed true to the series these last eight years, and Hudson Soft hasn't given players a reason yet to defect.&nbsp;Add in Facebook and Twitter integration for achievements, and you're looking at a juggernaut.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>Redline 4</i> is everything gamers could conceivably ask for. High-octane speed thrills, robust multiplayer, and, of course, incredible story direction. While this may be the end of the tale for The Captain, I have no doubt that we have not seen the last of the <i>Redline</i> universe by a long shot. The potential for adventures with whichever characters live in the canonical storyline are rich… but even until then, the details of every player's individual story have left an indelible mark. For all its twists and variations, this is a story for the ages, and one whose essential elements we all share. If being forced to drive over the oil slick in the climax of the last game hushed naysayers of the video game art form, this will &nbsp;finally silence them for good.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">---</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I place the controller at my side, breathe deeply, and, wiping away the tears pooling in my eyes but stoically refusing to fall, I silently bid goodbye forever to a character I grew to love, who I imbued with myself, who was inexorably a part of me, and may well be a part of you, too.</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">O Captain, my Captain…</span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">---</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Design: 9.1</b></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Story: 9.9</b></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Gameplay: 8.2</b></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Presentation: 9.8</b></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>OVERALL*: 9.7 </b><i>[GAMELOCUS EDITOR'S CHOICE]</i></span> <br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">*Overall Score not an average of component ratings.</span></blockquote></div></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>(My eternal debt and apologies to Michael Viner for using "Last Bongo in Belgium" for this stupid, stupid thing.)</i></span></div></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div></div></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-79078890563615961802012-04-28T21:09:00.000-04:002012-04-28T21:34:52.685-04:00Let's Get Together<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh yeah, that's right, I have this blog. Dang, huh? Been busy working on a potential something special with some older articles; we'll see.&nbsp;</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Anyway.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Competition is one of the fundamental elements of a game; the ability to win or lose or measure performance against another. It fosters investment in a game, and as more people do so, the greater a community can become for it. In the lead-up to the release of the reboot of the <i>SSX</i>&nbsp;series, I was enthralled at the idea of seeing what would come from a modernization of some of my all-time favorite games. Many people were initially frightened at the prospect of an overly serious adaptation from the very first promotional video, but fortunately the team behind the <i>skate.</i> series was in charge and was able to wrest the game's release free from... some of the Boilerplate Videogame In 2012 markers. I'm looking at you, "Pre-Order Bonuses", "Day 1 DLC", and "Facebook Integration".</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/sEYfw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://i.imgur.com/sEYfw.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">A grim fate narrowly avoided.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is, all in all, a commendable game, and the core mechanics manage to shine in spite of 2012 EA's Origin-shellacked trappings. One thing that seemed to trouble a fair number of people and still feels sorely missed, however, is real-time multiplayer. Leaderboards and ghost runs and the marvels of asynchronous competition are more than welcome, and the selling point of "taking down rivals on your own time" is by all means a worthy motivator. The upcoming restructuring of the ever-present time-sensitive "Global Events" and the constant presence of holographic visages riding alongside push that sense of being in a populated and active community right to its limit.&nbsp;And yet, despite the running data feeds and tiered rewards structures... you're always alone.</span></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No action you take has any direct effect on any other living person's gameplay. Some might consider that a step towards fairness; no worries about collision or distraction, no threat from some uncontrollable factor ruining your Perfect Run. It's also obviously a load off of the developers not having to slave over lag compensation and player-on-player hit detection. It's not that its exclusion isn't understandable, but it's still nevertheless lamentable. Even the potential throwback of local multiplayer on a split screen was omitted.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/EQEOb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i.imgur.com/EQEOb.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Everyone has their own "communal gaming" memories.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's just a bit disheartening; the mechanics for knocking down CPU characters is there, that tantalizing pointer towards an extra level of complexity... but there's nobody "real" to use it on. Geotags left behind by past riders, scores and race times posted by apparitions, little HUD "tombstones" on endurance-based "Survival" runs where foes reached their end. &nbsp; For a game that makes "racing" a third of its content, it feels strange being perpetually in time trial heats. Signs of life abound, but no proof.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Look at the games with the largest, most fervent player bases and competitive scenes: fighting games, real-time strategy games and the growing "lane control" subgenre, first-person shooters, professional sports simulations... including vehicular racing games. There's simply something innate about the knowledge that someone somewhere is on the receiving end of your victory or defeat; it's the difference between the paint-trading of &nbsp;Criterion's rightfully beloved <i>Burnout</i>&nbsp;series and the swarms of phantom cars in&nbsp;Nadeo's&nbsp;<i>Trackmania</i>&nbsp;games. The same gulf divides is present between a tense volley in tennis and leaderboard-jockeying in a round of golf, between a crowded poker table and counting moves in solitaire.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/n0HWP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="176" src="http://i.imgur.com/n0HWP.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The drama! The suspense! The hoodies and sunglasses!</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The choice the EA Sports team made determined the nature of the competition. In some cases the choice between synchronous and asynchronous seems clear-cut. In a game that focuses on collisions and wreckage, you let players run each other into oncoming traffic. In a game that prizes millisecond time differentials and precision maneuvering, you make each player responsible only for themselves. <i>SSX</i>&nbsp;seems like it could have gone either way or possibly catered to both, and it didn't. Maybe it was decided the gains from a slightly different versus mode wouldn't be worth the time and money, and if so that's a perfectly rational business decision. Of course, they also decided the title stood for "surfing/snowboarding/motocross" instead of "snowboard super-cross" for some reason, but hey, nobody's perfect.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just something to consider next time you drop down a slope unexpectedly feel a little lonely.</span></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-2403135074576450132012-04-12T17:42:00.002-04:002012-05-21T05:55:22.943-04:00Another Goddamn PAX East Diary (But Different)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I figure I should probably get back into the swing of writing things before I lose any sense of personal momentum. For the sake of easing back in, I figure the best thing to do is cobble together my snatches of experience from Twitter posts and/or drunken photo ops and compose them into a singular overarching idea.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I didn't have a Media pass; I was at a Holiday Inn with three good friends. I didn't go to any of the major panels or booths; no Ken Levine, no Casey Hudson, no Bioware, no <i>Assassin's Creed</i>, no <i>Max Payne 3</i>. Patience is a virtue, but there's only so much any of those spectacles are worth. I generally drew the line at 30 minutes to an hour, and had a far better four days for it. So, what did I do, see, think, experience? Who did I meet at talk to? We'll get into that. But, as someone who's now a repeat visitor to this thing, consider this an alternative guide on what to do.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Ol24V.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/Ol24V.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>Pictured: idiots who are doing it all wrong.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. Do it yourself, and do it early.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hotel reservations, Night Zero event tickets, floor passes; whatever it is, your friends cannot be trusted. Get it the second it goes on sale if you know for sure you're going, since all that waiting does is give The Enemy more time to cut you off. As much as your friends might be a pivotal part of the fun, they can also slap your Snooze button or vanish into thin air. Independence is a plus that pays back tenfold.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. Patience is only a virtue for so long.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The things with the longest lines are generally the most worthless; ditto things inside enclosed spaces you cannot see from the line or the floor proper. Why are you waiting in a line for 90 minutes to hang around in a standing-room-only closet and have paid cosplayers / community managers screen trailers that hit the Internet the day before? An inflatable sword you're going to pop in a week? I played <i>Rock Band Blitz</i>,<i>&nbsp;The Secret World</i>,<i> Joe Danger</i>,<i> SpellTower </i>and<i>&nbsp;</i>the upcoming <i>Jet Set Radio</i>&nbsp;XBLA port...&nbsp;and my wait times were maybe 10 minutes for each. if that. Waiting 2 hours to watch promotional footage doesn't magically become a smart idea because you paid for a convention pass. The number of stations is proportional to how much they want their game in the public's hands.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. All your disdain is completely justified.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All those horror stories you've heard are true. The Utilikilts, Vibram monkey-foot toe shoes, booth babe gawking, leather fedoras. Everyone spineless, slavering fanboy and devotee of the stinking morass that composes the "greater nerd culture" is out in force. The number of DS units I saw made me wonder if they were standard issue; what happened to MP3 players and books? I'm not advocating picking any fights, because you'll never win by virtue of sheer number, but if you find yourself reflexively looking down your nose at half the people you walk by, don't fight it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Hg2X0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i.imgur.com/Hg2X0.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Now imagine wearing them in a public bathroom.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4. Civil disobedience is your friend.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Enforcers" are the volunteer staff in charge of everything not handled by the convention center employees, and yes, a handful will actually prove helpful and understanding, having applied for the sake of creating a better experience for everyone. But, much like real police forces, ulterior motives are generally your best bet: easy access on off-shift hours, power-tripping, focusing attention on themselves, so on. Their ability to help you in the event of an actual need, such as directions or clearly-stated instructions, ranges from limited to active hindrance. Don't go around making people's lives worse, but don't be shy about subtly telling them to stuff it when barking demands rudely or treating you like a child. The unofficial Rule 1 of "Don't be a dick" should apply to all parties.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5. Take chances on the fringes.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Read every panel description; give every booth about 10 fair seconds of attention. Don't be afraid to gamble on an hour for a low-visibility panel; if you're like me, you can get through the convention floor almost entirely on your first day. As you work beyond the video game ends and through the card games to the tabletop section, you are almost guaranteed to notice a distinct drop-off in weenies. My longest wait was to alpha test "D&amp;D Next", and a deck of <i>Cards Against Humanity</i>&nbsp;with some well-adjusted people killed that time. And to say nothing about discovering&nbsp;<i><a href="http://legendofthecipher.com/">Legend of the Cipher</a></i>&nbsp;and its wide-eyed, ambitious attempt to merge Bambataa's Five Pillars and real people in the music business with a CCG.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QN2peFcgwJY?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I sincerely wish only the best for these people.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">6. Cherish the sane ones.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Much like the Internet from which most of the people at PAX claim a second citizenship to, your best bet is to seek out and stick by the handful who can give you a good conversation, or at the very least a pleasant exchange. If you get along with someone online and you can both pass for socially functional, chances are you'll enjoy each other's company. Whether drunken IHOP visits or quick tit-for-tats, don't pass up a chance at making human connections for anything. Some of my most memorable time was just chatting with people who didn't even necessarily share my opinions, but picking their brains was delightful on its own. Pass-holders, panelists, presenters, organizers, convention center staff, whoever; make contacts and make friends while you're in the same physical space.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7. Drink more booze, and do it off-site.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Self-explanatory... just be responsible. Make your own fun whenever possible, because Heaven knows nobody is going to do it for you. If it's on a schedule, it's going to be crowded and any magic there might have been will be diluted. Know when it's time to get your alone time and your sleep in so the next day isn't all woe and misery.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/sZqgA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/sZqgA.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>Good as a spa visit; soundtrack by pre-</i>Aja<i>&nbsp;Steely Dan.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>8. Pinch every penny.</b>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Between your hotel, your airfare/gasoline/train ticket, your passes, and your food, haven't you already shelled out your share? Impulse purchases are how some of the booth workers make their entire salaries; they don't need yours. Ask yourself at every pass if you'd buy it if you sitting at home and looking at an online order form. Are you ever going to wear that shirt in public, in front of other people in a social setting? Exactly how much dust is that foam&nbsp;<i>Minecraft</i>&nbsp;sword going to collect if it survives the trip home? I spent less than $20 on "souvenir" goods while on the floor of the BCEC, but still blew through almost $300 on necessities. Budget yourself before leaving if you have to.</span></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">9. Pull yourself out of it once in a while.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Every moment you take to recognize the patent absurdity in everything you're seeing and doing is crucial to keeping your head on. Remember your place in the greater world against all the pressure to lose yourself. Keep up with news on the outside world, or just poke a few air holes for yourself. Examples:</span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Glorified press release in standing room only mini-theater receives orgasmic screams of delight.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Discarded promotional Lincoln hat lying unloved against bench. Consumption and disposal, accelerated to poignant melancholy.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Small child of undetermined ethnicity haunts food court, belly distended in famine. Fat Mario orders burger. Gaia weeps softly.</span>&nbsp;</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>10. Make it count.</b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You'll never see it all. In fact, you're almost guaranteed to have two things lined up in just such a way where catching both is untenable. Not just happening at the same time, either; factor in wait times and even panels an hour apart can be conjoined into a snafu. If it's going to be worth getting into, get there an hour before the start and judge the crowd. Cosplay-heavy fanboy nest like the <i>Mass Effect</i>&nbsp;panel? Nobody's gonna nut up and say anything negative, so just bounce. Is there a m<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">an holding a sign to say it's <i>too early</i> to <i>start waiting</i> so I should <i>come back later</i> to <i>wait properly</i>&nbsp;for <i>2 hours? </i>Call it an early day and book it for the hotel; nothing is worth being screamed at with threats of pass confiscation, especially if it's going to be recorded and archived anyway. Remember your own worth as a human being when deciding the worth of something!</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Kc97e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/Kc97e.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">How seriously am I supposed to take you? Other than 'not at all'?</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">So... should you go? Eh, why not. Revel in some absurdity, take self-important nerds down a peg or two, make some new acquaintances, have some experiences, engage in dialogue, shake hands, get drunk, take pictures. Tune in the pulse of this strange proto-subculture you've defaulted into. Remind yourself that the few people out there with half a brain and some fraction of a heart are out there, scattered adrift in the same indifferent sea of waddling money pinatas as you. Clear a few days in your schedule; go and find them at all costs.</span></span>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-31410164721156034622012-03-27T00:42:00.003-04:002012-03-27T00:57:28.293-04:00...Could Be Better I Guess<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Last time we discussed the <i>shocking revelation</i> of what my favorite example of game design is. The infrastructure in place in Three Rings' long-running puzzle-centric MMO <i>Puzzle Pirates</i>&nbsp;might not reveal itself at first blush, what with the cutesy G-rated Playmobil-like visual design and general "kid-friendly" style. But, as one plays on, well-modeled systems for player-run affiliations ("flags" and "crews") in both naval and economic conflict get their chance to impress. So the question begs: with such a rich and capable world in which to play puzzle games and pretend to swashbuckle, why don't more people participate... and why don't I play all that much, for that matter? Well, the following are a few overarching hypotheses: some blame lies with the game, some with me, and some with the world at large.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/1oWr2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://i.imgur.com/1oWr2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">It really is uncanny, to an extent.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. It's over eight years old.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most MMOs would kill to have the kind of developer-supported longevity that <i>Pirates</i>&nbsp;has. Compare to other big-name MMOs: <i>The Matrix Online</i>&nbsp;lasted a few months over 4 years, and memorable flop <i>APB</i>&nbsp;only had four months before caving in. The initial release of&nbsp;<i>World of Warcraft </i>in North America was a year <i>after</i>&nbsp;Three Rings debuted their game. Certainly being free-to-play versus strict subscription for full content is a difference, but the general impression here should be that even if the game were to shut down tomorrow it would have a long, full life behind it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This of course also means that many people have already cycled through and had their fill. Populations within the actual worlds are often either brand new faces (often very young thanks to the cartoonish accessibility of the video game's presentation), people making another brief return before vanishing again (like myself), or long-time stalwarts with established empires and histories that the other two groups will almost never achieve. It's tough to acclimate to a world full of nearly nothing but other transients and entrenched veterans. It's just a dynamic that comes with age; expansions of content aside, the core game hasn't changed in all this time, and it shows. A lot of the mileage has been used up, and there's no way to turn back the clock except the far-flung day someone decides it's time for <i>Puzzle Pirates II.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Lny1y.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://i.imgur.com/Lny1y.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>I can hear you thinking about </i>Portal<i>, and I want punch you in the face.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. It's "for kids".</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You would think that, for an industry and medium struggling to define itself and grow, making things which are accessible or family-friendly would be admirable, but take one look at the palpable cloud of hate you can still summon just by uttering "casual gamer" and you again understand what's really going on here. Video games want more than anything else to be taken as <i>mature</i>&nbsp;and <i>for adults</i>&nbsp;and <i>meaningful</i>. Replace most of the talk about whether or not they are or can be "art" and replace those phrases instead; the subtext is so painfully obvious that it was the first thing I ever bothered to write about here. For people who want to devote their lives to these things, being "for kids" or "a waste of time" simply won't do, and they would rather argue until blue in the face that the things they've already played or made have are valuable.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Older gamers with this kind of inferiority complex about their primary pastime will naturally shy away from smiley peg-people and wacky word filters that change curses to words like "scupper" or "John Thomas" and so on. Of course, when this happens it becomes self-fulfilling: a lot of the players then are younger children, save the older hands and people who either aren't bothered by or embrace the visual design... for whatever reason. Again, just something that makes it difficult for attempts to actualize oneself in the world at this stage to stick.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/2R675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="294" src="http://i.imgur.com/2R675.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This is for babies! Therefore I want guns and boobs and swears like a big boy!<br /></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. It isn't <i>EVE Online</i>.</span></b><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The two games have much in common as far as the world's flexibility for different kinds of play within the various available systems. The only reason I chose <i>Puzzle Pirates</i>&nbsp;over <i>EVE</i>&nbsp;is because action in the former is much more immediate and accessible than action in the other. As a friend of an intermittent <i>EVE</i>&nbsp;player, I simply cannot understand the draw of a game that requires hours and days and months of idling to make a character of value to the machinations of the game's world. <i>Puzzle Pirates</i>&nbsp;has its fair share of tedium and grinding before being able to establish a power base, but at the very least there's some action on the player's part compared to logging out and waiting for a skill to train over the next however many days.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But, obviously, plenty of people are more than willing to go through the drab motions of immediate <i>EVE</i>&nbsp;play to be able to participate in the ongoing space opera. No customizable pets, no printed doll faces; just a bunch of space voyage refugees being grim as heck and rendered in high-quality graphics. There's even fluid transfer between two currency types so that savvy players can fund their own subscription with nothing but virtual in-game money. In the parlance of both games, "pieces of eight" are to "ISK" as "doubloons" are to "PLEX," and as long as somebody's paying real money, Three Rings and CCP Games are happy.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xalHyIRMVSI/Td3y3Kry1gI/AAAAAAAAAnA/rI29G-pxO2Y/s1600/gold+farmers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xalHyIRMVSI/Td3y3Kry1gI/AAAAAAAAAnA/rI29G-pxO2Y/s320/gold+farmers.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Beats having Chinese prisoners farm your in-game money, right?</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, why isn't an eight-year-old kids' puzzle MMO the epicenter of the gaming universe? Because it's eight years old, for kids, and about puzzles. Sure, you can add in that maybe the decay mechanic on items could be a little more generous, and the "premium" sub-game rotation means lots of repetition in the games you play. But at the end of the day, none of this was the point (Seriously, you needed me to spell this out for you?) It's about giving a nod to a team of designers who created a video game that's easy to get into, difficult to "master" however you choose to take that, and trusts its players to create their own significance, rather than spoon-feeding them one by robbing them of actual gameplay depth.</span></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-22746232472814741332012-03-22T21:11:00.005-04:002012-03-27T00:43:36.371-04:00My Favorite Video Game...<div style="text-align: justify;">Did you cringe at the title? Good, I would too.&nbsp;You can relax, though, thanks to the following facts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><ol><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>This is not about the video game that I personally enjoyed most as an experience.</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>This <i>is </i>about the video game whose design ethos I hold the greatest admiration for.</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The game in the former description is not, nor was it ever, the game in the latter.</b></li></ol><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's right, the video game I admire most as a work of design is nowhere near the one I "like best," nor was it at any time. I have of course played it now and again, and enjoyed most of my time spent on it to a reasonable degree. But, for a number of reasons I will address as well, I have stopped playing it and will likely not come back to it for months... or even years, should it exist that long! But, before I nitpick the things I find personally unlikable, let's go into what it does right.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWS4NGBM2zM/T2rtij_k6NI/AAAAAAAAABk/7WTX8PcUsQI/s1600/video-game-protagonists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWS4NGBM2zM/T2rtij_k6NI/AAAAAAAAABk/7WTX8PcUsQI/s320/video-game-protagonists.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>If you guessed a game with any of these bozos in it, you lose!</i></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">If the mention of timespan wasn't already enough of a context clue, it's an MMO. In an ideal situation, the use of a very large and well-populated multiplayer space filled with player-controlled characters interacting with one another in real time is the best way to foster variety in activity. If a designer is going to attempt to simulate a living, breathing world of individuals with their own goals and motivations, the best way to do it isn't with a static cast of hardwired NPCs... it's with actual people.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Players are able to change roles or tasks with a surprising amount of freedom, and performance feedback is constant. Actions a single player takes are monitored constantly, along with minute-to-minute reporting of in-game performance, there are server-wide rankings for players on both the scale of prowess and the scale of time spent at an activity. As part of greater player-populated units, individuals can choose to dabble or focus intently on a single skill; their time investment and their skill as measured by the games' metric are generally at least satisfactory at reflecting both.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/r6fDH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://i.imgur.com/r6fDH.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>It may not be very granular or even explicitly quantified, but you </i>will <i>know how well you're playing.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">The way the game balances competitive and cooperative behaviors is surprisingly deft as well. In the bulk of the suggested primary activity of the game, players adopt a set of open roles. Their individual performances are important to the group as a whole and likewise have interdependent effects between roles within the unit. The act of acquiring people to complete a group finds a delicate balance between prizing skill for difficult battles, but not so much that drafting in "pubbies" or "carrying" lackluster performers is impossible.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hierarchies and player-created alignments exist, but rank is not merely administrative or cosmetic. As one rises in responsibility and standing and the network of subordinates grows broader and deeper, new in-game tasks emerge to complement organizational power. There again is a system of levels to mirror the amount of time spent and skill possessed, and with both readily visible to others it is skill that proves most valued. In this way, players can choose where they wish to exist within a distinctive series of levels of involvement; there are kingpins, there are generals, and there are grunts alike.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/sqcDu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://i.imgur.com/sqcDu.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Nope, not </i>EVE Online<i>... but that's about as close as it gets.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">The way a group's power is measured is in amassment of wealth. That wealth is expressed in the size of player-manned fleets, the riches in an organization's "war chest", or their holdings in either land or storefronts within a vast player-driven economy. Trade and sanctioned forms of player-on-player gambling are as brisk as warring against computer- or player-controlled entities, if not more so. While there exists a fiction to the world and a setting and premise to govern activity, the true stories told derive from the actions of the players, recorded in the battle records, trade chits, shop deeds and governances. Players of import can become as integral to the "lore" of a server as the fictional constructs of the creators.&nbsp;And, make no mistake, the stature of nearly any player is a dictum of their mastery of one, some or nearly all of the rulesets governing a mechanism of the world. Fighters, foragers, crafters, hagglers, masterminds, peons, allies, foes, confidants, backstabbers, spenders, hoarders, risk-takers, conservatives and everyone else has room to exist.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">This video game I have described here is available right now. It requires no outlay of money; there are two types of currency, one of which can be bought with real money, but both are fluidly interchangeable on a player-driven exchange, so nothing of gameplay significance is behind a paywall. Competitions for designing new systematic sub-games for in-game tasks are frequently run by the developers and are open to nearly any coder, with the option of using developer-standard open-source design tool included. There is a labor system governed by player input and wages to partially mitigate trade monopolies. Customizable player clothing, housing, and transport are both fully supported. There are countless in-game achievements, some of which even yield items of cosmetic or even tradable market value. The English-speaking servers, though recently consolidated from six to three, are now in their ninth year of existence. And the whole thing runs on PC, Mac and Linux. Because it's coded in Java and looks like this:</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/GtROW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://i.imgur.com/GtROW.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Oh god you can't </i>possibly <i>mean-</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's right. The game I most admire is Three Rings'&nbsp;<i>Puzzle Pirates</i>. Next time I'll do my best to explain what it could do better and why I take multiple-year breaks playing the game whose infrastructure I hold in possibly the highest regard.</div></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-37612074593641014272012-03-21T01:17:00.000-04:002012-03-21T01:17:35.618-04:00Fun & Games, Pt. 4<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We've spent our fair share of this series considering games from a design perspective, and where games big and small, lauded and loathed, have betrayed their narrative-heavy stylizations. But what about "fun"? Can a game be judged on it as a criteria? What do people really mean when they talk about it? Are in we in need of some kind of system to categorize different "fun types" and determine how a particular video game delivers each?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fun, in the most general sense, is enjoyment. When someone tells you a game is "fun", they are articulating their appreciation of the overall experience, even if they cannot particularly put their finger on or elucidate why. It could be they are engrossed by the plotline and cutscene; it could be the draw of visually and audially rendered splendor; it could even (perish the thought) be the mechanics and interactions of the game itself. What's certain is that the word, for all its value as a common term, is useless when trying to operate critically, analytically, or descriptively. The number of times I've seen "it's just fun" as the beginning and end of someone's defense of a game is just staggering, to the point where I have to assume that people who use it are, at least some of the time, avoiding having to admit they like a video game for its shiny colors and/or pulpy romance subplots.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/VN9kA.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://i.imgur.com/VN9kA.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">You know... for kids!</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is nothing new, of course; people not wanting to think about what might be wrong with something they like is as old as humanity. Of course, take that irrational impulse, multiply by $60 and create an entire industry dependent on almost tribal devotions to these fairly high-ticket leisure items and things get problematic quickly. Admitting faults with the video game immediately become faults with you for liking it, and there's no room for measured praise.&nbsp;</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another thing to be sure to avoid is others taking offense to you marginalizing their special flavor of derived "fun" from a game. Again, a lack of critical thinking skills in the general audience means problems analyzing design choices being successful or poor; they become interpreted and misconstrued as dictated denials that anyone can find pleasure from that game. On paper, of course it sounds like a silly overreaction... but then, I don't know how long you in particular have been at this "Internet" thing, but histrionics over laughably simple misunderstandings is stock and trade around these parts.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/xNKNd.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://i.imgur.com/xNKNd.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">File photo of you mid-debate about that thing you like.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_LeBlanc">Mark LeBlanc</a> chooses to subdivide "fun" into eight divisions: sensory stimulation, social interaction, fantastic escapism, exploration &amp; discovery, narrative engrossment (!), expressive space, submissive "brain-off" relaxation, and challenge. For argument's sake, it seems a fairly comprehensive catalog of the sources of most enjoyment from games and other pastimes. While trying to create an absolute system of valuing one kind of fun versus another is clearly useless, we can take what we've come to see as the strengths of a game, often in video game form, versus other medium. Games seem a more obvious source of fun via challenge than movies, much as narrative strength is more inherent to passive forms that interactive ones. It seems strange to spend years coding lifelike semblances of people and recording their voices for a video game if filming real ones for a movie gets you the same narrative "fun", doesn't it?&nbsp;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The purpose of video games, according to top-level developers who work on million-selling games, is primarily to remodel the physical universe and write massive conditional scripts for characters with little to no bearing on the plot they want to wholly control. They use the medium of computer-created rulesets to simulate worlds and march you through them to get the same kinds of "fun" you could get from film or literature, at much less cost to creators and audience alike. Variants of "fun" like challenge or discovery or socialization are discarded almost completely by modern video game developers in one of the mediums best equipped to facilitate them: a <i>game.</i></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/SuFVV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i.imgur.com/SuFVV.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Is this a bragging point or a sign something might be amiss?</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If the makers of a game want to try and create a semblance of a world, then certainly I applaud them dependent on their level of success. But if the writers have a strict story to tell, then what good is that world but a fancy, over-elaborate film soundstage? Seems like a lot of work just to get around giving people SAG cards. If only they still trusted the player as a participant instead of an intruder. There's only so long you can treat the audience that way before it becomes self-fulfilling.</span></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-31446453329683626922012-03-16T00:53:00.003-04:002012-03-18T03:28:46.002-04:00Fun & Games, Pt. 3<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Okay, okay, okay; one more case. Along with some other stuff.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Case #4</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Name: Casey Hudson</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Game:&nbsp;<i>Mass Effect 3</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Fault: Illusory player agency (among other things)</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">I'm not here to decry this game as the nadir of modern gaming; the game is... mostly well-crafted as far as what it intends to be. I'm not here to stoke any flames or dog-pile on the poor, beat-up, downtrodden multi-billion-dollar publisher; the business practices surrounding the game are a separate issue altogether. &nbsp;I'm not going to get too deep into the lack of structural interplay of the dialogue trees from the FPS sections; I've done that before. This isn't even about the conclusion of the game/series; the fault in question here goes far beyond the specific bizarre endings that were chosen as the capstones of a major video game "trilogy". (Let's face it, they're probably halfway done with #4 and drafting storyboards on 5 and 6 right now.)</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/vyNmA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://i.imgur.com/vyNmA.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: small;">This Shepard is based on Bjork. I like Bjork.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">How, in the entire <i>Mass Effect</i>&nbsp;series, did you exert your will over the machinations of the plot? Preset interrupts along a linear Good/Bad duality and a bunch of branching decisions, nearly all of which eventually folded back on themselves and rendered your choices irrelevant. If a character died, their branch of&nbsp;side quests&nbsp;and hyper-simplified "get freaky" scripts were locked out. For a legendary prophecy-heralded space Mary Sue, Shepard doesn't seem to have really accomplished all that much given the possible branches of his timeline as seen in the game, has s/he?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">When you treat a game's plot as&nbsp;prescriptive&nbsp;on the part of the creator and insist on it as the focal point, these are the kinds of corners you paint yourself into. &nbsp;Every time you decide to give the player a modicum of real, honest influence over the story, you're starting up a whole new required branch of voice acting and game assets. No matter how many forks you place along the way, the reality is that by putting narrative first you've more than likely doomed yourself to an inescapable overriding sense of linearity. Folding branches back into themselves only serves as insult to injury for your audience.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pentadact/3182668075/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="bad wheel by Pentadact, on Flickr"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><img alt="bad wheel" height="129" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3340/3182668075_e6149339de.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: small;"><i>Courtesy of the Flickr account of </i>PC Gamer's<i>&nbsp;Tom Francis.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Time for a digression!&nbsp;Remember when movie adaptations of video games were awful? Not just in terms of the acting and the production values, but how well they represented the game they took their title from? Some like <i>Resident Evil</i>&nbsp;even went and made up new stories out of whole cloth! Hey, to be totally honest, even to this day I remember <i>The Super Mario Bros. Movie</i>&nbsp;fondly; while I'm not exactly waiting with bated breath for the Criterion re-release, it was a fun little throwaway that just so happened to pull in Dennis Hopper (!) and Mojo Nixon (?!) while officially marking the twilight years of Bob Hoskins' on-screen career.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">People decry it to this day as a poor movie for being "unfaithful"... but how much did writers and directors really have to go on? Surely they couldn't just show Hoskins running in a straight line and jumping, with no bridge between Brooklyn and the Mushroom Kingdom. &nbsp;The process of making the movie adaptation relied on a lot of artistic leeway and drastic re-interpretation of familiar elements exactly because the platforming entries in the&nbsp;<i>Mario</i>&nbsp;series have always been some of the most pure celebrations of video-games-<i>as</i>-<i>games</i>. The premise was always endearingly silly; that the games' action didn't translate to film is a testament to the fact that Mario <i>belongs</i>&nbsp;as a video game character.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Tt3VB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><img border="0" height="177" src="http://i.imgur.com/Tt3VB.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: small;">Bowser with Goomba and Koopa outside of their natural habitat.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">When video games are allowed to be games, the stories come from the&nbsp;<i>player.</i>&nbsp;You generally don't reminisce with other people who have played games like the <i>Burnout</i>&nbsp;series about your rise through the ranks of the racing underground, but rather about the time&nbsp;<i>you as the player</i>&nbsp;finished a challenge a hundredth of a second in front of 2nd place or five dollars over the required damage total. Rather than believe in the medium's relatively unique power to engross through interaction and skill, the trend now is to engross through <i>passive</i> escapism. You can handle the ho-hum run and shoot parts, we'll take care of making you feel like the savior of the universe, just sit down and shut up.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Think about the key buzzwords and bullet points being used as major draws for top-tier high-budget games: "action&nbsp;set-pieces", "cinematic", Hollywood voice actors, Hollywood score composers, Sisyphean struggles for "realism" in graphics, the ever-greater reliance on scripted/fixed sequences, and so on. I've heard these kind of de-gamed video games called everything from "beautiful tunnels" to "asset tours", but whatever nickname you have for them, they're not interested in letting the player control anything significant. Tell me that&nbsp;Naughty&nbsp;Dog's&nbsp;<i>Uncharted</i>&nbsp;series isn't anything more than a bunch of thinly-veiled fan fiction sequels to the first three&nbsp;<i>Indiana Jones</i>&nbsp;movies. Do it while twirling swords at me menacingly.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FKsiFtD-4Kc/T2K7aAEoucI/AAAAAAAAABc/TRCqGlBVrEk/s1600/indianargh.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FKsiFtD-4Kc/T2K7aAEoucI/AAAAAAAAABc/TRCqGlBVrEk/s320/indianargh.gif" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: small;">That's what I thought.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Some people, like Ryan Kuo of <i>Kill Screen</i>,&nbsp;would argue that the narrowing of choices and their effect on the fictional world of <i>Mass Effect 3</i>&nbsp;is part of some grandiose and compelling message on the nature of finite life in the universe and how all choices we make are in some way equally as insignificant and in vain. Of course, in the process of his deep metaphysical pondering over an unsatisfying and alienating gameplay experience, he would also have you believe that one times four equals some number greater than twenty-three:</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font: 13.0px Verdana; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: small;"><i>Mass Effect 3 is wholly unlike its predecessors in that it is a game about indecision. Shepard begins with a <b>single</b> mission, to find an important artifact on Mars. But moments later she has arrived at the Citadel where she is chaotically bombarded with the needs of others. The wounded, the hapless, and the greedy are all asking. Quickly her list of tasks has <b>quadrupled</b> into the <b>dozens</b>.</i></span></div></blockquote><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Cheap shots aside, the point is to go with Occam's razor if you're going to factor in authorial intent. You can certainly bend over backwards to explain the game's terse dismissal of player agency compared even to past installments as a profound philosophical quandary with enough quasi-erudite framing. Or, instead of that, you can chalk it up to the same poor design that's already present in character animation, graphical presentation, stilted dialogue, infantilized mockups of human interaction, rote and unsatisfying combat, and general respect for the player as a capable individual.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">So, what should <i>Mass Effect 3</i>&nbsp;be then? In its loveless marriage of dull action sequences to a facile story in discrete chunks only held together as a formality by premise and sequence, what would be the best way to experience it? Certainly not a video game, for that would rely on the audience. No movie or even series of movies could properly include all the minutiae and details of world-building, or fit in the needless errand-running of filler fetch quests. And, for just that little extra, how could we make sure to include big-name "nerd-friendly" personalities like Tricia Helfer?</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><b>Recommended Revamp: <i>Battlestar Galactica (2003 series)</i></b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><b>Kind of Like:&nbsp;</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><b><i>Battlestar Galactica (2003 series)</i></b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;">Final installment soon!</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4526375844000863789.post-39338849116901088252012-03-12T12:21:00.004-04:002012-03-13T21:24:05.080-04:00Fun & Games, Pt. 2<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As discussed in Part 1, an internally coherent formal system of analyzing video games as games is not some fanciful pipe dream. Neither is it a savage assault on the nebulous concept of "fun" or any other subjective appraisal value. With this skeletal but strong basis, we can finally tackle what proves so problematic about a swath of design elements and the games that utilize them improperly. And because controversy drives page hits, let's call out as many people as possible for poor game design!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most of the games and designers targeted in the following text are by no means the only guilty parties, but are certainly some of the most egregious offenders. Games from studios large and small with reputations illustrious to spotty have all in some way transgressed against the idea that power in games should belong to players, and rather than some fictional verdict and sentence, each will conclude with a separate medium in which the assumed aims of the designers could have been better met, and why. Just trying to be helpful, because that's that's just the kind of guy I am!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/d0tq8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://i.imgur.com/d0tq8.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The best games always seemed to make for terrible movies...</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Case #1</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Name: Ken Levine</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Game: <i>Bioshock</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fault: No correlation between players' actions and intended message.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Many would posit the original <i>Bioshock</i>&nbsp;as a key point in the development of the Big Message Game movement, thanks to the thickly applied patina of objectivism-versus-populism shellacked onto its plot. The failures of Andrew Ryan to account for man's imperfections as rational actors and the opportunist thuggery of Atlas/Frank Fontaine are also compounded with the questioning of the nature of free will via the heavy-handed "would you kindly" reveal. Certainly, these are interesting topics which possess the kind of philosophical gravity to make a minor masterpiece out of any work that can deftly handle them. As you can imagine, many would argue exactly that!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The problem is that the act of running about Rapture to shoot and maim the deep-sea biotechnological equivalent of crackheads does little to correlate to all this grandiose hand-wringing over the innate moral state of humanity. The first two-thirds of the game before meeting Ryan are an exercise in world-building and smacking things with wrenches that could have been accomplished in a fraction of the time. The setting is certainly an impressive one, both novel and fitting to the Galt's Gulch styling of the colony's inception, but in essence the entire process of traversing it merely amounts to a grand tour of the ruined husk of society before confronting its maker. The sub-bosses all hit the same note of "deranged exaggeration of societal ideals and values" in an extended trek that eventually has the grace to end up at real plot points.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All in all a minor offense, but the dissociation between action and intent only widened exponentially. Once it was clearly proven that just the facsimile of meaningfulness would suffice to game audiences, all bets were off. And merrily down the road we went, hailing <i>Bioshock</i>&nbsp;not as a commendable first step towards profundity but as complete fruition. We can see the results of this line of thinking in the downward slope running down <i>Bioshock 2</i>&nbsp;and right into a seemingly "infinite" abyss.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Recommended Revamp: Movie; "thinking man's" blockbuster with Oscar chops</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kind of Like:&nbsp;<i>Batman Begins</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://moviesmedia.ign.com/movies/image/article/106/1068021/what-we-want-the-bioshock-movie-20100209010315528-000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="177" src="http://moviesmedia.ign.com/movies/image/article/106/1068021/what-we-want-the-bioshock-movie-20100209010315528-000.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">No butter either, please, I'm watching my weight.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Case #2</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Name: Anna Anthropy</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Game: <i>Dys4ia</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fault: Direct contradiction between player's actions and intended message.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some background information that may shock you: even though I write a video game blog, I am a white, heterosexual, cisgendered American male. (Please, bring your jaws back up from the floor.)&nbsp;As a result of this, I cannot speak for the tribulations of having a physical body at odds with one's gender, to speak nothing of the experience of attempting to change that. Between societal stressors and stigma from friends, family, lovers and strangers alike, the quest to feel comfortable in one's own skin is without question a noble and human pursuit fraught with difficulty. I have immense respect for those who are willing to face the harmful ignorance of society head-on in an attempt to seek their own personal happiness.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What I simply cannot understand about the game is why it is so astonishingly simplistic. For a game that I would expect to convey the myriad trials of undergoing hormone therapy in a sympathetic light, having everything displayed in bright faux-pixel art and controlled with just four arrow keys feels inappropriate. Managing medication is moving a mouth left and right to catch falling pills; confronting people who confuse your gender identity or refuse to acknowledge your true gender is moving a blocky shield up and down. The absolute last thing I want to do is trivialize the experiences of the game's creator, which is why I feel so confused when she does it to herself via the game she created. It's cognitive dissonance to the extreme.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I suppose accurately reflecting the difficulty via the gameplay would probably make <i>Dys4ia</i>&nbsp;much less accessible, with far fewer people playing or much less completing it. But then, it seems strange to take the route of a Newgrounds flash game anyway. Go with what you know I suppose?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Recommended Revamp: Movie; short indie but not too art-house documentary</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kind of Like:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtrndkSZOhM" style="font-style: italic;">Louie</a></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/2AEDr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://i.imgur.com/2AEDr.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Pro Tip: Hold the Right Arrow key to be tormented by patriarchal hegemony.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Case #3</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Name: Brenda Brathwaite</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Game: <i>Train</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fault: Using setting to destroy game and emotionally manipulate players.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the behest of someone I was having a heated discussion with over this board game, I watched the first 45 minutes of Brathwaite's hour-long talk at GDC 2010. The brunt of the time was spent detailing the critical bombshell of the third and most famous game to date in her ironically-named six-part "Mechanic is the Message" series. Although it's morbidly amusing to wonder what will come of the presumed fourth installment, <i>Mexican Kitchen Workers</i>, I was caught entirely by surprise by her description of the first, <i>The New World</i>.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Brathwaite's daughter was having trouble understanding the horrors of the American slave trade, so a game was devised: index card ships with little painted peg people crossed the ocean on dice rolls, and limited supplies meant not everyone would make it to the other shore. Similarly-colored "families" were split up and treated as expendable commodities by the player in their effort to maximize success. The message was relayed quite brilliantly by the actions of gambling with human souls as cargo; it was so self-evident and clear that her daughter understood after only playing several turns, emphasis on "playing".</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The follow-up creation, <i>The Ireland Game</i>, was an entirely different beast. Every detail of the playing surface's construction was a symbolic representation of what Brathwaite knew about her heritage, down to burlap stuffed with family mementos. The means of playing the game, as far as what the people engaging in her creation were to do... never came up. The distinct impression was made that the actual gameplay was so trivial to <i>The Ireland Game</i>&nbsp;that it was, in essence, no more than a particularly overt mixed-media sculpture.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/32NRI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/32NRI.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Riveting.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then it was time for <i>Train: </i>vague and cryptically open-ended rules typed on authentic Nazi typewriters, Kristallnacht broken window play boards, and 60&nbsp;<i>Juden</i>-yellow passenger pieces worth 100,000 Dead Hebrew Souls each. Some "notoriously tough rabbi" blesses the game as an act of Torah, speaking authoritatively on behalf of every surviving member of the Chosen People in his praise. And how do you win:&nbsp;is it disrupting other players' trains to stop them from reaching the concentration camps, or is it figuring out the blatantly obvious and ham-handedly telegraphed "twist" and refusing to play?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Putting the utter trivialization of genocide on the back-burner for a bit, let's focus on the actual way you play the game, which received all of about 2 minutes' time to make room for more self-congratulatory media blitz recaps.&nbsp;<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;">Three people each have a track to move down, and on their turn they can roll to move, roll to add figurines to a train, take an action card which affects movement (for example, a hill causing triple speed), or play a card in their hand. Play cards on whoever you want, and the player who gets the most people to the end of their line wins, with destination names on "Terminus" cards.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;">&nbsp;The conclusion of a game is described as follows: "Train is over when it ends."</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Except, oh no, the "Terminus" cards are actually Nazi Whammy concentration camps and you just murdered countless innocents! The game is evil, stop playing, ignore the win condition! Understand the monstrosity of your actions while gaining sympathy for the poor ignorant German train conductors. If only they had known; if only <i>you</i>&nbsp;had known!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/V1xAA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://i.imgur.com/V1xAA.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>Smooth moves, chump; looks like you just got </i>railroaded<i>&nbsp;into ethnic cleansing!</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But what exactly did this have to do with dice and cards and three-player board games? Isn't the peril of blind submission to authority something we've known since 1961, thanks to the Milgram experiment? How is <i>Train</i>&nbsp;any more revelatory than being told every Chinese checker marble you jump over is the crippled orphan of an Apple factory worker and expecting you to forfeit? If the Terminus cards were changed to civilian rescue outposts for Bosnian refugees, how would that impact the function of your movement rolls?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Being a highly charged subject, one is inclined to be deeply affected by the <i>experience</i>&nbsp;provided by <i>Train&nbsp;</i>as some kind of participatory performance art... but do not by any means mistake this for the game itself. For someone speaking at GDC rather than touring haute art galleries, it is astonishing to see someone praised for creating a self-destructing game. The attention lavished on the game is proof positive that the general population, versed in the industry or not, is dismal at being able to separate form from content for even a moment. As a parting thought, consider the story of the lone woman who, upon the Big Reveal, continued to play <i>Train</i>&nbsp;unabated as before. Where the other players (and Brathwaite) saw her as an unfeeling monster, she deserves nothing but praise for catching on immediately to both the premise and inherent artifice of&nbsp;<i>Train</i>&nbsp;and winning a private victory over its mock-profundity.</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Recommended Revamp: Improv theater; guerrilla-style, unsuspecting audience</b></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Kind of Like: The <i>Billionaires for Bush</i>&nbsp;"protest"</b></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/XeNpm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.imgur.com/XeNpm.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">About equal in terms of&nbsp;subtlety.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That's clearly enough for one post. Maybe I'll do another round of cases before conclusion, maybe not. That's the fun of being your own boss!</span></div>Gaspar Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02743301460737596063noreply@blogger.com5